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WILLIAM     DEAN    HOWELLS 


YEARS  OF  MY  YOUTH 


OTHER  AUTOBIOGRAPICAL  BOOKS 

BY 
WILLIAM   DEAN  HOWELLS 

A   BOY'S   TOWN.     Illustrated.     Post  8vo 
MY   LITERARY    PASSIONS.     12mo 
LITERARY    FRIENDS    AND   ACQUAINTANCE 

Illustrated.     Crown  8vo 


HARPER  &  BROTHERS,  NEW  YORK 


YEARS   OF   MY   YOUTH 


W.  D.  HOWELLS 


HARPER   6-   BROTHERS    PUBLISHERS 
NEW   YORK   AND    LONDON 


UNDERGRAD.  LIB. 


YEARS  OF  MY  YOUTH 


Copyright,  1916,  by  Harper  &   Brothers 

Printed  in  the  United  States  of  America 

Published  October,  1916 

F-Q 


LIBRARY 


YEARS  OF  MY  YOUTH 


YEARS  OF  MY  YOUTH 


IT  is  hard  to  know  the  child's  own  earliest  recollections 
from  the  things  it  has  been  told  of  itself  by  those  with 
whom  its  life  began.  They  remember  for  it  the  past 
which  it  afterward  seems  to  remember  for  itself;  the 
wavering  outline  of  its  nature  is  shadowed  against  the 
background  of  family,  and  from  this  it  imagines  an  in 
dividual  existence  which  has  not  yet  begun.  The  events 
then  have  the  quality  of  things  dreamt,  not  lived,  and 
they  remain  of  that  impalpable  and  elusive  quality  in  all 
the  after  years. 


Of  the  facts  which  I  must  believe  from  the  witness  of 
others,  is  the  fact  that  I  was  born  on  the  1st  of  March, 
1837,  at  Martin's  Ferry,  Belmont  County,  Ohio.  My 
father's  name  was  William  Cooper  Howells,  and  my 
mother's  was  Mary  Dean;  they  were  married  six  years 
before  my  birth,  and  I  was  the  second  child  in  their  family 
of  eight.  On  my  father's  side  my  people  were  wholly 
Welsh,  except  his  English  grandmother,  and  on  my 
mother's  side  wholly  German,  except  her  Irish  father, 
of  whom  it  is  mainly  known  that  he  knew  how  to  win  my 
grandmother  Elizabeth  Dock  away  from  her  very  loving 
family,  where  they  dwelt  in  great  Pennsylvania-German 

3 


YEARS    OF    MY    YOUTH 

comfort  and  prosperity  on  their  farm  near  Harrisburg,  to 
share  with  him  the  hardships  of  the  wild  country  over 
the  westward  mountains.  She  was  the  favorite  of  her 
brothers  and  sisters,  and  the  best-beloved  of  her  mother, 
perhaps  because  she  was  the  youngest;  there  is  a  shad 
owy  legend  that  she  went  one  evening  to  milk  the  cows, 
and  did  not  return  from  following  after  her  husband;  but 
I  cannot  associate  this  romantic  story  with  the  ageing 
grandmother  whom  I  tenderly  loved  when  a  child,  and 
whom  I  still  fondly  remember.  She  spoke  with  a  strong 
German  accent,  and  she  had  her  Luther  Bible,  for  she 
never  read  English.  Sometimes  she  came  to  visit  my 
homesick  mother  after  we  went  to  live  in  southern  Ohio; 
once  I  went  with  my  mother  to  visit  her  in  the  little 
town  where  I  was  born,  and  of  that  visit  I  have  the  re 
membrance  of  her  stopping  me  on  the  stairs,  one  morn 
ing  when  I  had  been  out,  and  asking  me  in  her  German 
idiom  and  accent,  "What  fur  a  tay  is  it,  child?" 

I  can  reasonably  suppose  that  it  is  because  of  the  mix 
ture  of  Welsh,  German,  and  Irish  in  me  that  I  feel  myself 
so  typically  American,  and  that  I  am  of  the  imaginative 
temperament  which  has  enabled  me  all  the  conscious  years 
of  my  life  to  see  reality  more  iridiscent  and  beautiful, 
or  more  lurid  and  terrible  than  any  make-believe  about 
reality.  Among  my  father's  people  the  first  who  left 
Wales  was  his  great-grandfather.  He  established  himself 
in  London  as  a  clock  and  watch  maker,  and  I  like  to  believe 
that  it  is  his  name  which  my  tall  clock,  paneled  in  the 
lovely  chinoiserie  of  Queen  Anne's  time,  bears  graven  on 
its  dial.  Two  sons  followed  him,  and  wrought  at  the  same 
art,  then  almost  a  fine  art,  and  one  of  them  married  in 
London  and  took  his  English  wife  back  with  him  to  Wales. 
His  people  were,  so  far  as  my  actual  knowledge  goes, 
middle-class  Welsh,  but  the  family  is  of  such  a  remote 

antiquity  as  in  its  present  dotage  not  to  know  what  part 

4 


YEARS    OF    MY    YOUTH 

of  Wales  it  came  from.  As  to  our  lineage  a  Welsh  clergy 
man,  a  few  years  ago,  noting  the  identity  of  name,  in 
vited  me  to  the  fond  conjecture  of  descent  from  Hywel 
Dda,  or  Howel  the  Good,  who  became  king  of  Wales  about 
the  time  of  Alfred  the  Great.  He  codified  the  laws  or 
rather  the  customs  of  his  realm,  and  produced  one  of  the 
most  interesting  books  I  have  read,  and  I  have  finally 
preferred  him  as  an  ancestor  because  he  was  the  first 
literary  man  of  our  name.  There  was  a  time  when  I 
leaned  toward  the  delightful  James  Howell,  who  wrote  the 
Familiar  Letters  and  many  books  in  verse  and  prose,  and 
was  of  several  shades  of  politics  in  the  difficult  days  of 
Charles  and  Oliver;  but  I  was  forced  to  relinquish  him  be 
cause  he  was  never  married.  My  father,  for  his  part, 
when  once  questioned  as  to  our  origin,  answered  that  so 
far  as  he  could  make  out  we  derived  from  a  blacksmith, 
whom  he  considered  a  good  sort  of  ancestor,  but  he  could 
not  name  him,  and  he  must  have  been,  whatever  his  merit, 
a  person  of  extreme  obscurity. 

There  is  no  record  of  the  time  when  my  great-grand 
father  with  his  brothers  went  to  London  and  fixed  there 
as  watchmakers.  My  tall  clock,  which  bears  our  name 
on  its  dial,  has  no  date,  and  I  can  only  imagine  their 
London  epoch  to  have  begun  about  the  middle  of  the 
eighteenth  century.  Being  Welsh,  they  were  no  doubt 
musical,  and  I  like  to  cherish  the  tradition  of  singing  and 
playing  women  in  our  line,  and  a  somehow  cousinship 
with  the  famous  Parepa.  But  this  is  very  uncertain; 
what  is  certain  is  that  when  my  great-grandfather  went 
back  to  Wales  he  fixed  himself  in  the  little  town  of  Hay, 
where  he  began  the  manufacture  of  Welsh  flannels,  a 
fabric  still  esteemed  for  its  many  virtues,  and  greatly 
prospered.  When  I  visited  Hay  in  1883  (my  father 
always  call  it,  after  the  old  fashion,  The  Hay,  which 

was    the    right   version    of    its    Norman    name    of    La 

5 


YEARS    OF    MY    YOUTH 

Haye),  three  of  his  mills  were  yet  standing,  and  one 
of  them  was  working,  very  modestly,  on  the  sloping 
bank  of  the  lovely  river  Wye.  Another  had  sunk  to 
be  a  stable,  but  the  third,  in  the  spirit  of  our  New 
World  lives,  had  become  a  bookstore  and  printing-office, 
a  well-preserved  stone  edifice  of  four  or  five  stories, 
such  as  there  was  not  the  like  of,  probably,  in  the 
whole  of  Wales  when  Hywel  Dda  was  king.  My 
great-grandfather  was  apparently  an  excellent  business 
man,  but  I  am  afraid  I  must  own  (reluctantly,  with  my 
Celtic  prejudice)  that  literature,  or  the  love  of  it,  came 
into  our  family  with  the  English  girl  whom  he  married 
in  London.  She  was,  at  least,  a  reader  of  the  fiction  of 
the  day,  if  I  may  judge  from  the  high-colored  style  of  the 
now  pathetically  faded  letter  which  she  wrote  to  reproach 
a  daughter  who  had  made  a  runaway  match  and  fled  to 
America.  So  many  people  then  used  to  make  runaway 
matches;  but  when  very  late  in  the  lives  of  these  eloping 
lovers  I  once  saw  them,  an  old  man  and  woman,  at  our 
house  in  Columbus,  they  hardly  looked  their  youthful  ad 
venture,  even  to  the  fancy  of  a  boy  beginning  to  un- 
realize  life.  The  reader  may  care  to  learn  that  they  were 
the  ancestors  of  Vaughan  Kester,  the  very  gifted  young 
novelist,  who  came  into  popular  recognition  almost  in  the 
hour  of  his  most  untimely  death,  and  of  his  brother  Paul 
Kester,  the  playwright. 


ii 


My  great-grandfather  became  "a  Friend  by  Convince- 
ment,"  as  the  Quakers  called  the  Friends  not  born  in  their 
Society;  but  I  do  not  know  whether  it  was  before  or  after 
his  convincement  that  he  sailed  to  Philadelphia  with  a 

stock  of  his  Welsh  flannels,  which  he  sold  to  such  advan- 

6 


YEARS    OF   MY    YOUTH 

tage  that  a  dramatic  family  tradition  represents  him 
wheeling  the  proceeds  in  a  barrel  of  silver  down  the  street 
to  the  vessel  which  brought  him  and  which  took  him  away. 
That  was  in  the  time  of  Washington's  second  Presidency, 
and  Washington  strongly  advised  his  staying  in  the 
country  and  setting  up  his  manufacture  here;  but  he  was 
prospering  in  Wales,  and  why  should  he  come  to  America 
even  at  the  suggestion  of  Washington?  It  is  another 
family  tradition,  that  he  complied  so  far  as  to  purchase 
a  vast  acreage  of  land  on  the  Potomac,  including  the  site 
of  our  present  capital,  as  some  of  his  descendants  in  each 
generation  have  believed,  without  the  means  of  expro 
priating  the  nation  from  its  unlawful  holdings.  This 
would  have  been  the  more  difficult  as  he  never  took  a 
deed  of  his  land,  and  he  certainly  never  came  back  to 
America;  yet  he  seems  always  to  have  been  haunted  by 
the  allurement  of  it  which  my  grandfather  felt  so  potently 
that  after  twice  visiting  the  country  he  came  over  a  third 
time  and  cast  his  lot  here. 

He  was  already  married,  when  with  his  young  wife 
and  my  father  a  year  old  he  sailed  from  London  in  1808. 
Perhaps  because  they  were  chased  by  a  French  priva 
teer,  they  speedily  arrived  in  Boston  after  a  voyage 
of  only  twenty-one  days.  In  the  memoir  which  my 
father  wrote  for  his  family,  and  which  was  published 
after  his  death,  he  tells  that  my  grandmother  formed 
the  highest  opinion  of  Boston,  mainly,  he  surmises,  from 
the  very  intelligent  behavior  of  the  young  ladies  in  mak 
ing  a  pet  of  her  baby  at  the  boarding-house  where  she 
stayed  while  her  husband  began  going  about  wherever 
people  wished  his  skill  in  setting  up  woolen-mills.  The 
young  ladies  taught  her  little  one  to  walk;  and  many 
years  afterward,  say  fifty,  when  I  saw  her  for  the  last  time 
in  a  village  of  northwestern  Ohio,  she  said  "the  Boston- 
ians  were  very  nice  people,"  so  faithfully  had  she  cherished, 
2  7 


YEARS    OF   MY    YOUTH 

through  a  thousand  vicissitudes)   the  kind  memory  of 
that  first  sojourn  in  America. 

I  do  not  think  she  quite  realized  the  pitch  of  greatness 
at  which  I  had  arrived  in  writing  for  the  Atlantic 
Monthly,  the  renowned  periodical  then  recently  founded 
in  Boston,  or  the  fame  of  the  poets  whom  I  had  met  there 
the  year  before.  I  suspect  that  she  was  never  of  the 
literary  taste  of  my  English  great-grandmother;  but  her 
father  had  been  a  school-teacher,  and  she  had  been  care 
fully  educated  by  the  uncle  and  aunt  to  whom  she  was 
left  at  her  parents'  early  death.  They  were  Friends,  but 
she  never  formally  joined  the  Society,  though  worship 
ing  with  them;  she  was,  like  her  husband,  middle-class 
Welsh,  and  as  long  as  they  lived  they  both  misplaced 
their  aspirates.  If  I  add  that  her  maiden  name  was 
Thomas,  and  that  her  father's  name  was  John  Thomas, 
I  think  I  have  sufficiently  attested  her  pure  Cymric  origin. 
So  far  as  I  know  there  was  no  mixture  of  Saxon  blood 
on  her  side;  but  her  people,  like  most  of  the  border  Welsh, 
spoke  the  languages  of  both  races;  and  very  late  in  my 
father's  life,  he  mentioned  casually,  as  old  people  will 
mention  interesting  things,  that  he  remembered  his  father 
and  mother  speaking  Welsh  together.  Of  the  two  she 
remained  the  fonder  of  their  native  country,  and  in  that 
last  visit  I  paid  her  she  said,  after  half  a  century  of  exile, 
"We  do  so  and  so  at  home,  and  you  do  so  and  so  here." 
I  can  see  her  now,  the  gentlest  of  little  Quaker  ladies, 
with  her  white  fichu  crossed  on  her  breast;  and  I  hesitate 
attributing  to  her  my  immemorial  knowledge  that  the 
Welsh  were  never  conquered,  but  were  tricked  into  union 
with  the  English  by  having  one  of  their  princes  born,  as 
it  were  surreptitiously,  in  Wales;  it  must  have  been  my 
father  who  told  me  this  and  amused  himself  with  my 
childish  race-pride  in  the  fact.  She  gave  me  an  illustrated 
Tour  of  Wales,  having  among  its  steel-engravings  the  pic- 

8 


YEARS    OF    MY    YOUTH 

ture  of  a  Norman  castle  where,  by  favor  of  a  cousin  who 
was  the  housekeeper,  she  had  slept  one  night  when  a  girl; 
but  in  America  she  had  slept  oftener  in  log  cabins,  which 
my  grandfather  satisfied  his  devoted  unworldliness  in 
making  his  earthly  tabernacles.  She  herself  was  not,  I 
think,  a  devout  person;  she  had  her  spiritual  life  in  his, 
and  followed  his  varying  fortunes,  from  richer  to  poorer, 
with  a  tacit  adherence  to  what  he  believed,  whether  the 
mild  doctrine  of  Quakerism  or  the  fervid  Methodism  for 
which  he  never  quite  relinquished  it. 

He  seems  to  have  come  to  America  with  money  enough 
to  lose  a  good  deal  in  his  removals  from  Boston  to  Pough- 
keepsie,  from  Poughkeepsie  to  New  York  City,  from  New 
York  to  Virginia,  and  from  Virginia  to  eastern  Ohio, 
where  he  ended  in  such  adversity  on  his  farm  that  he  was 
glad  to  accept  the  charge  of  a  woolen-mill  in  Steubenville. 
He  knew  the  business  thoroughly  and  he  had  set  up  mills 
for  others  in  his  various  sojourns,  following  the  line  of 
least  resistance  among  the  Quaker  settlements  opened  to 
him  by  the  letters  he  had  brought  from  Wales.  He  even 
went  to  the  new  capital,  Washington,  in  a  hope  of  manu 
facturing  in  Virginia  held  out  to  him  by  a  nephew  of 
President  Madison,  but  it  failed  him  to  his  heavy  cost; 
and  in  Ohio,  his  farming  experiments,  which  he  renewed 
in  a  few  years  on  giving  up  that  mill  at  Steubenville, 
were  alike  disastrous.  After  more  than  enough  of  them 
he  rested  for  a  while  in  Wheeling,  West  Virginia,  where 
my  father  met  my  mother,  and  they  were  married. 

They  then  continued  the  family  wanderings  in  his  own 
search  for  the  chance  of  earning  a  living  in  what  seems  to 
have  been  a  very  grudging  country,  even  to  industry  so 
willing  as  his.  He  had  now  become  a  printer,  and  not 
that  only,  but  a  publisher,  for  he  had  already  begun  and 
ended  the  issue  of  a  monthly  magazine  called  The  Gleaner, 
made  up,  as  its  name  implied,  chiefly  of  selections;  his 


YEARS    OF    MY    YOUTH 

sister  helped  him  as  editor,  and  some  old  bound  vol 
umes  of  its  few  numbers  show  their  joint  work  to  have 
been  done  with  good  taste  in  the  preferences  of  their 
day.  He  married  upon  the  expectation  of  affluence  from 
the  publication  of  a  work  on  The  Rise,  Progress  and  Down 
fall  of  Aristocracy,  which  almost  immediately  preceded 
the  ruin  of  the  enthusiastic  author  and  of  my  father 
with  him,  if  he  indeed  could  have  experienced  further 
loss  in  his  entire  want  of  money.  He  did  not  lose  heart, 
and  he  was  presently  living  contentedly  on  three  hun 
dred  dollars  a  year  as  foreman  of  a  newspaper  office  in 
St.  Clairville,  Ohio.  But  his  health  gave  way,  and  a  little 
later,  for  the  sake  of  the  outdoor  employment,  he  took  up 
the  trade  of  house-painter;  and  he  was  working  at  this 
in  Wheeling  when  my  grandfather  Dean  suggested  his 
buying  a  lot  and  building  a  house  in  Martin's  Ferry,  just 
across  the  Ohio  River.  The  lot  must  have  been  bought 
on  credit,  and  he  built  mainly  with  his  own  capable  hands 
a  small  brick  house  of  one  story  and  two  rooms  with  a 
lean-to.  In  this  house  I  was  born,  and  my  father  and 
mother  were  very  happy  there ;  they  never  owned  another 
house  until  their  children  helped  them  work  and  pay  for 
it  a  quarter  of  a  century  afterward,  though  throughout 
this  long  time  they  made  us  a  home  inexpressibly  dear  to 
me  still. 

My  father  now  began  to  read  medicine,  but  during  the 
course  of  a  winter's  lectures  at  Cincinnati  (where  he 
worked  as  a  printer  meanwhile),  his  health  again  gave 
way  and  he  returned  to  Martin's  Ferry.  When  I  was 
three  years  old,  my  grandmother  Dean's  eldest  brother, 
William  Dock,  came  to  visit  her.  He  was  the  beloved  pa 
triarch  of  a  family  which  I  am  glad  to  claim  my  kindred 
and  was  a  best  type  of  his  Pennsylvania-German  race. 
He  had  prospered  on  through  a  life  of  kindness  and  good 

deeds;  be  was  so  rich  that  he  had  driven  in  his  own  car-i 

10 


YEARS    OF   MY   YOUTH 

riage  from  Harrisburg,  over  the  mountains,  and  he  now 
asked  my  father  to  drive  with  him  across  the  state  of 
Ohio.  When  they  arrived  in  Dayton,  my  father  went  on 
by  canal  to  Hamilton,  where  he  found  friends  to  help 
him  buy  the  Whig  newspaper  which  he  had  only  just  paid 
for  when  he  sold  it  eight  years  later. 


in 

Of  the  first  three  years  of  my  life  which  preceded  this 
removal  there  is  very  little  that  I  can  honestly  claim  to 
remember.  The  things  that  I  seem  to  remember  are  see 
ing  from  the  window  of  our  little  house,  when  I  woke  one 
morning,  a  peach-tree  in  bloom;  and  again  seeing  from 
the  steamboat  which  was  carrying  our  family  to  Cincin 
nati,  a  man  drowning  in  the  river.  But  these  visions, 
both  of  them  very  distinct,  might  very  well  have  been 
the  effect  of  hearing  the  things  spoken  of  by  my  elders, 
though  I  am  surest  of  the  peach-tree  in  bloom  as  an 
authentic  memory. 

This  time,  so  happy  for  my  father  and  mother,  was 
scarcely  less  happy  because  of  its  uncertainties.  My 
young  aunts  lived  with  their  now  widowed  mother  not 
far  from  us;  as  the  latest  comer,  I  was  in  much  request 
among  them,  of  course;  and  my  father  was  hardly  less 
in  favor  with  the  whole  family  from  his  acceptable  habit  of 
finding  a  joke  in  everything.  He  supplied  the  place  of  son 
to  my  grandmother  in  the  absence  of  my  young  uncles, 
then  away  most  of  their  time  on  the  river  which  they 
followed  from  the  humblest  beginnings  on  keel-boats  to 
the  proudest  endings  as  pilots  and  captains  and  owners 
of  steamboats.  In  those  early  days  when  they  return 
ed  from  the  river  they  brought  their  earnings  to  their 
mother  in  gold  coins,  which  they  called  Yellow  Boys, 

and  which  she  kept  in  a  bowl  in  the  cupboard,  where  I 

11 


YEARS    OF    MY    YOUTH 

seem  so  vividly  to  have  seen  them,  that  I  cannot  quite 
believe  I  did  not.  These  good  sons  were  all  Democrats 
except  the  youngest,  but  they  finally  became  of  my 
father's  anti-slavery  Whig  faith  in  politics,  and  I  believe 
they  were  as  glad  to  have  their  home  in  a  free  state  as 
my  father's  family,  who  had  now  left  Wheeling,  and  were 
settled  in  southwestern  Ohio. 

There  were  not  many  slaves  in  Wheeling,  but  it  was  a 
sort  of  entrepot  where  the  negroes  were  collected  and 
embarked  for  the  plantations  down  the  river,  in  their 
doom  to  the  death-in-life  of  the  far  South.  My  grand 
father  Howells  had,  in  the  anti-slavery  tradition  of  his 
motherland,  made  himself  so  little  desired  among  his 
Virginian  fellow-citizens  that  I  have  heard  his  removal 
from  Wheeling  was  distinctly  favored  by  public  sentiment ; 
and  afterward,  on  the  farm  he  bought  in  Ohio,  his  fences 
and  corn-cribs  suffered  from  the  pro-slavery  convictions 
of  his  neighbors.  But  he  was  dwelling  in  safety  and 
prosperity  among  the  drugs  and  books  which  were  his 
merchandise  in  the  store  where  I  began  to  remember  him 
in  my  earliest  days  at  Hamilton.  He  seemed  to  me  a  very 
old  man,  and  I  noticed  with  the  keen  observance  of  a 
child  how  the  muscles  sagged  at  the  sides  of  his  chin  and 
how  his  under  lip,  which  I  did  not  know  I  had  inherited 
from  him,  projected.  His  clothes,  which  had  long  ceased 
to  be  drab  in  color,  were  of  a  Quaker  formality  in  cut; 
his  black  hat  followed  this  world's  fashion  in  color,  but 
was  broad  in  the  brim  and  very  low-crowned,  which  added 
somehow  in  my  young  sense  to  the  reproving  sadness  of 
his  presence.  He  had  black  Welsh  eyes  and  was  of  the 
low  stature  of  his  race;  my  grandmother  was  blue-eyed; 
she  was  little,  too;  but  my  aunt,  their  only  surviving 
daughter,  with  his  black  eyes,  was  among  their  taller 
children.  She  was  born  several  years  after  their  settle 
ment  in  America,  but  she  loyally  misused  her  aspirates 

12 


YEARS    OF    MY    YOUTH 

as  they  did,  and,  never  marrying,  was  of  a  life-long  de 
votion  to  them.  They  first  lived  over  the  drug-store, 
after  the  fashion  of  shopkeepers  in  England;  I  am  aware 
of  my  grandfather  soon  afterward  having  a  pretty  house 
and  a  large  garden  quite  away  from  the  store,  but  he 
always  lived  more  simply  than  his  means  obliged.  Amidst 
the  rude  experiences  of  their  backwoods  years,  the  family 
had  continued  gentle  in  their  thoughts  and  tastes,  though 
my  grandfather  shared  with  poetry  his  passion  for  re 
ligion,  and  in  my  later  boyhood  when  I  had  begun  to 
print  my  verses,  he  wrote  me  a  letter  solemnly  praising 
them,  but  adjuring  me  to  devote  my  gifts  to  the  service 
of  my  Maker,  which  I  had  so  little  notion  of  doing  in  a 
selfish  ideal  of  my  own  glory. 

Most  of  his  father's  fortune  had  somehow  gone  to 
other  sons,  but,  whether  rich  or  poor,  their  generation 
seemed  to  be  of  a  like  religiosity.  One  of  them  lived  in 
worldly  state  at  Bristol  before  coming  to  America,  and 
was  probably  of  a  piety  not  so  insupportable  as  I  found 
him  in  the  memoir  which  he  wrote  of  his  second  wife,  when 
I  came  to  read  it  the  other  day.  Him  I  never  saw,  but 
from  time  to  time  there  was  one  or  other  of  his  many  sons 
employed  in  my  grandfather's  store,  whom  I  remember 
blithe  spirits,  disposed  to  seize  whatever  chance  of  a  joke 
life  offered  them,  such  as  selling  Young's  Night  Thoughts 
to  a  customer  who  had  whispered  his  wish  for  an  improper 
book.  Some  of  my  father's  younger  brothers  were  of  a 
like  cheerfulness  with  these  lively  cousins,  and  of  the 
same  aptness  for  laughter.  One  was  a  physician,  another 
a  dentist,  another  in  a  neighboring  town  a  druggist,  an 
other  yet  a  speculative  adventurer  in  the  regions  to  the 
southward:  he  came  back  from  his  commercial  forays 
once  with  so  many  half-dollars  that  when  spread  out 
they  covered  the  whole  surface  of  our  dining-table ;  but 
I  am  quite  unable  to  report  what  negotiation  they  were 

13 


YEARS    OF    MY    YOUTH 

the  spoil  of.  There  was  a  far  cousin  who  was  a  painter, 
and  left  (possibly  as  a  pledge  of  indebtedness)  with  my 
dentist  uncle  after  a  sojourn  among  us  a  picture  which  I 
early  prized  as  a  masterpiece,  and  still  remember  as  the 
charming  head  of  a  girl  shadowed  by  the  fan  she  held 
over  it.  I  never  saw  the  painter,  but  I  recall,  from  my 
father's  singing  them,  the  lines  of  a  " doleful  ballad" 
which  he  left  behind  him  as  well  as  the  picture: 

A  thief  will  steal  from  you  all  that  you  havye, 

But  an  unfaithful  lovyer  will  bring  you  to  your  grave. 

The  uncle  who  was  a  physician,  when  he  left  off  the 
practice  of  medicine  about  his  eightieth  year,  took  up 
the  art  of  sculpture ;  he  may  have  always  had  a  taste  for 
it,  and  his  knowledge  of  anatomy  would  have  helped 
qualify  him  for  it.  He  modeled  from  photographs  a  head 
of  my  father  admirably  like  and  full  of  character,  the 
really  extraordinary  witness  of  a  gift  latent  till  then 
through  a  long  life  devoted  to  other  things. 

We  children  had  our  preference  among  these  Howells 
uncles,  but  we  did  not  care  for  any  of  them  so  much  as 
for  our  Dean  uncles,  who  now  and  then  found  their  way 
up  to  Hamilton  from  Cincinnati  when  their  steamboats 
lay  there  in  their  trips  from  Pittsburg.  They  were  all 
very  jovial;  and  one  of  the  younger  among  them  could 
play  the  violin,  not  less  acceptably  because  he  played  by 
ear  and  not  by  art.  Of  the  youngest  and  best-loved  I 
am  lastingly  aware  in  his  coming  late  one  night  and  of 
my  creeping  down-stairs  from  my  sleep  to  sit  in  his  lap 
and  hear  his  talk  with  my  father  and  mother,  while  his 
bursts  of  laughter  agreeably  shook  my  small  person.  I 
dare  say  these  uncles  used  to  bring  us  gifts  from  that 
steamboating  world  of  theirs  which  seemed  to  us  of  a 

splendor  not  less  than  what  I  should  now  call  orientaj 

14 


YEARS    OF    MY    YOUTH 

when  we  sometimes  visited  them  at  Cincinnati,  and  came 
away  bulging  in  every  pocket  with  the  more  portable  of 
the  dainties  we  had  been  feasting  upon.  In  the  most 
signal  of  these  visits,  as  I  once  sat  between  my  father  and 
my  Uncle  William,  for  whom  I  was  named,  on  the  hurri 
cane  roof  of  his  boat,  he  took  a  silver  half-dollar  from  his 
pocket  and  put  it  warm  in  my  hand,  with  a  quizzical  look 
into  my  eyes.  The  sight  of  such  unexampled  riches 
stopped  my  breath  for  the  moment,  but  I  made  out  to 
ask,  "Is  it  for  me?"  and  he  nodded  his  head  smilingly  up 
and  down;  then,  for  my  experience  had  hitherto  been  of 
fippenny-bits  yielded  by  my  father  after  long  reasoning, 
I  asked,  "Is  it  good?"  and  remained  puzzled  to  know  why 
they  laughed  so  together;  it  must  have  been  years  before 
I  understood. 

These  uncles  had  grown  up  in  a  slave  state,  and  they 
thought,  without  thinking,  that  slavery  must  be  right; 
but  once  when  an  abolition  lecturer  was  denied  public 
hearing  at  Martin's  Ferry,  they  said  he  should  speak  in 
their  mother's  house;  and  there,  much  unaware,  I  heard 
my  first  and  last  abolition  lecture,  barely  escaping  with 
my  life,  for  one  of  the  objections  urged  by  the  mob  out 
side  was  a  stone  hurled  through  the  window,  where  my 
mother  sat  with  me  in  her  arms.  At  my  Uncle  William's 
house  in  the  years  after  the  Civil  War,  my  father  and 
he  began  talking  of  old  times,  and  he  told  how,  when  a 
boy  on  a  keel-boat,  tied  up  to  a  Mississippi  shore,  he  had 
seen  an  overseer  steal  upon  a  black  girl  loitering  at  her 
work,  and  wind  his  blacksnake-whip  round  her  body, 
naked  except  for  the  one  cotton  garment  she  wore. 
"When  I  heard  that  colored  female  screech,"  he  said,  and 
the  old-fashioned  word  female,  used  for  compassionate 
respectfulness,  remains  with  me,  "and  saw  her  jump,  I 
knew  that  there  must  be  something  wrong  in  slavery." 

Perhaps  the  sense  of  this  had  been  in  his  mind  when  he 

15 


YEARS    OF    MY    YOUTH 

determined  with  his  brothers  that  the  abolition  lecturer 
should  be  heard  in  their  mother's  house. 

She  sometimes  came  to  visit  us  in  Hamilton,  to  break 
the  homesick  separations  from  her  which  my  mother  suf 
fered  through  for  so  many  years,  and  her  visits  were  times 
of  high  holiday  for  us  children.  I  should  be  interested 
now  to  know  what  she  and  my  Welsh  grandmother  made 
of  each  other,  but  I  believe  they  were  good  friends, 
though  probably  not  mutually  very  intelligible.  My 
mother's  young  sisters,  who  also  came  on  welcome  visits, 
were  always  joking  with  my  father  and  helping  my  mother 
at  her  work;  but  I  cannot  suppose  that  there  was  much 
common  ground  between  them  and  my  grandfather's 
family  except  in  their  common  Methodism.  For  me,  I 
adored  them;  and  if  the  truth  must  be  told,  though  I 
had  every  reason  to  love  my  Welsh  grandmother,  I  had  a 
peculiar  tenderness  for  my  Pennsylvania-Dutch  grand 
mother,  with  her  German  accent  and  her  caressing  ways. 
My  grandfather,  indeed,  could  have  recognized  no  dif 
ference  among  heirs  of  equal  complicity  in  Adam's  sin; 
and  in  the  situation  such  as  it  was,  I  lived  blissfully  un 
born  to  all  things  of  life  outside  of  my  home.  I  can  recur 
to  the  time  only  as  a  dream  of  love  and  loving,  and  though 
I  came  out  of  it  no  longer  a  little  child,  but  a  boy  strug 
gling  tooth  and  nail  for  my  place  among  other  boys,  I  must 
still  recur  to  the  ten  or  eleven  years  passed  in  Hamilton 
as  the  gladdest  of  all  my  years.  They  may  have  been 
even  gladder  than  they  now  seem,  because  the  incidents 
which  embody  happiness  had  then  the  novelty  which 
such  incidents  lose  from  their  recurrence;  while  the 
facts  of  unhappiness,  no  matter  how  often  they  repeat 
themselves,  seem  throughout  life  an  unprecedented  experi 
ence  and  impress  themselves  as  vividly  the  last  time  as  the 
first.  I  recall  some  occasions  of  grief  and  shame  in  that 
far  past  with  unfailing  distinctness,  but  the  long  spaces 

16 


YEARS    OF   MY    YOUTH 

of  blissful  living  which  they  interrupted  hold  few  or  no 
records  which  I  can  allege  in  proof  of  my  belief  that  I 
was  then,  above  every  other  when, 

Joyful  and  free  from  blame. 


IV 

Throughout  those  years  at  Hamilton  I  think  of  my 
father  as  absorbed  in  the  mechanical  and  intellectual  work 
of  his  newspaper.  My  earliest  sense  of  him  relates  him 
as  much  to  the  types  and  the  press  as  to  the  table  where 
he  wrote  his  editorials  amidst  the  talk  of  the  printers, 
or  of  the  politicians  who  came  to  discuss  public  affairs 
with  him.  From  a  quaint  pride,  he  did  not  like  his 
printer's  craft  to  be  called  a  trade;  he  contended  that  it 
was  a  profession;  he  was  interested  in  it,  as  the  expression 
of  his  taste,  and  the  exercise  of  his  ingenuity  and  inven 
tion,  and  he  could  supply  many  deficiencies  in  its  means 
and  processes.  He  cut  fonts  of  large  type  for  job-work 
out  of  apple-wood  in  default  of  box  or  olive;  he  even 
made  the  graver's  tools  for  carving  the  letters.  Nothing 
pleased  him  better  than  to  contrive  a  thing  out  of  some 
thing  it  was  not  meant  for,  as  making  a  penknife  blade 
out  of  an  old  razor,  or  the  like.  He  could  do  almost  any 
thing  with  his  ready  hand  and  his  ingenious  brain,  while 
I  have  never  been  able  to  do  anything  with  mine  but 
write  a  few  score  books.  But  as  for  the  printer's  craft 
with  me,  it  was  simply  my  joy  and  pride  from  the  first 
things  I  knew  of  it.  I  know  when  I  could  not  read,  for 
I  recall  supplying  the  text  from  my  imagination  for  the 
pictures  I  found  in  books,  but  I  do  not  know  when  I  could 
not  set  type.  My  first  attempt  at  literature  was  not 
written,  but  put  up  in  type,  and  printed  off  by  me.  My 
father  praised  it,  and  this  made  me  so  proud  that  I  showed 

17 


YEARS    OF   MY    YOUTH 

it  to  one  of  those  eminent  Whig  politicians  always  haunt 
ing  the  office.  He  made  no  comment  on  it,  but  asked  me 
if  I  could  spell  baker.  I  spelled  the  word  simple-heartedly, 
and  it  was  years  before  I  realized  that  he  meant  a  hurt  to 
my  poor  little  childish  vanity. 

Very  soon  I  could  set  type  very  well,  and  at  ten  years 
and  onward  till  journalism  became  my  university,  the 
printing-office  was  mainly  my  school.  Of  course,  like 
every  sort  of  work  with  a  boy,  the  work  became  irksome 
to  me,  and  I  would  gladly  have  escaped  from  it  to  every 
sort  of  play,  but  it  never  ceased  to  have  the  charm  it  first 
had.  Every  part  of  the  trade  became  familiar  to  me, 
and  if  I  had  not  been  so  little  I  could  at  once  have  worked 
not  only  at  case,  but  at  press,  as  my  brother  did.  I  had 
my  favorites  among  the  printers,  who  knew  me  as  the 
Old  Man,  because  of  the  habitual  gravity  which  was  apt 
to  be  broken  in  me  by  bursts  of  wild  hilarity;  but  I  am 
not  sure  whether  I  liked  better  the  conscience  of  the 
young  journeyman  who  wished  to  hold  me  in  the  leash 
of  his  moral  convictions,  or  the  nature  of  my  companion 
in  laughter  which  seemed  to  have  selected  for  him  the 
fit  name  of  Sim  Haggett.  This  merrymaker  was  married, 
but  so  very  presently  in  our  acquaintance  was  widowed, 
that  I  can  scarcely  put  any  space  between  his  mourning 
for  his  loss  and  his  rejoicing  in  the  first  joke  that  fol 
lowed  it.  There  were  three  or  four  of  the  journeymen, 
with  an  apprentice,  to  do  the  work  now  reduced  by  many 
facilities  to  the  competence  of  one  or  two.  Some  of  them 
slept  in  a  den  opening  from  the  printing-office,  where 
I  envied  them  the  wild  freedom  unhampered  by  the  con 
ventions  of  sweeping,  dusting,  or  bed-making;  it  was 
next  to  camping  out. 

The  range  of  that  young  experience  of  mine  tran 
scends  telling,  but  the  bizarre  mixture  was  pure  delight 
to  the  boy  I  was,  already  beginning  to  take  the  impress 

18 


YEARS    OF    MY    YOUTH 

of  events  and  characters.  Though  I  loved  the  art  of 
printing  so  much,  though  my  pride  even  more  than  my 
love  was  taken  with  it,  as  something  beyond  other  boys, 
yet  I  loved  my  schools  too.  In  their  succession  there 
seem  to  have  been  a  good  many  of  them,  with  a  variety 
of  teachers,  whom  I  tried  to  make  like  me  because  I  liked 
them.  I  was  gifted  in  spelling,  geography,  and  reading, 
but  arithmetic  was  not  for  me.  I  could  declaim  long  pas 
sages  from  the  speeches  of  Corwin  against  the  Mexican 
War,  and  of  Chatham  against  the  American  War,  and 
poems  from  our  school  readers,  or  from  Campbell  or  Moore 
or  Byron;  but  at  the  blackboard  I  was  dumb.  I  bore 
fairly  well  the  mockeries  of  boys,  boldly  bad,  who  played 
upon  a  certain  simplicity  of  soul  in  me,  and  pretended, 
for  instance,  when  I  came  out  one  night  saying  I  was  six 
years  old,  that  I  was  a  shameless  boaster  and  liar.  Swim 
ming,  hunting,  fishing,  foraging  at  every  season,  with  the 
skating  which  the  waters  of  the  rivers  and  canals  afforded, 
were  my  joy;  I  took  my  part  in  the  races  and  the  games, 
in  football  and  in  baseball,  then  in  its  feline  infancy  of 
Three  Corner  Cat,  and  though  there  was  a  family  rule 
against  fighting,  I  fought  like  the  rest  of  the  boys  and 
took  my  defeats  as  heroically  as  I  knew  how;  they  were 
mostly  defeats. 

My  world  was  full  of  boys,  but  it  was  also  much  haunted 
by  ghosts  or  the  fear  of  them.  Death  came  early  into  it, 
the  visible  image  in  a  negro  babe,  with  the  large  red  copper 
cents  on  its  eyelids,  which  older  boys  brought  me  to  see, 
then  in  the  funeral  of  the  dearly  loved  mate  whom  we 
school-fellows  followed  to  his  grave.  I  learned  many 
things  in  my  irregular  schooling,  and  at  home  I  was 
always  reading  when  I  was  not  playing.  I  will  not  pre 
tend  that  I  did  not  love  playing  best;  life  was  an  ex 
periment  which  had  to  be  tried  in  every  way  that  pre 
sented  itself,  but  outside  of  these  practical  requisition^ 

19 


YEARS    OF    MY    YOUTH 

there  was  a  constant  demand  upon  me  from  literature. 
As  to  the  playing  I  will  not  speak  at  large  here,  for  I 
have  already  said  enough  of  it  in  A  Boy's  Town;  and  as 
to  the  reading,  the  curious  must  go  for  it  to  another  book 
of  mine  called  My  Literary  Passions.  Perhaps  there  was 
already  in  my  early  literary  preferences  a  bent  toward 
the  reality  which  my  gift,  if  I  may  call  it  so,  has  since 
taken.  I  did  not  willingly  read  poetry,  except  such 
pieces  as  I  memorized:  little  tragedies  of  the  sad  fate  of 
orphan  children,  and  the  cruelties  of  large  birds  to  small 
ones,  which  brought  the  lump  into  my  throat,  or  the 
moralized  song  of  didactic  English  writers  of  the  eigh 
teenth  century,  such  as  "Pity  the  sorrows  of  a  poor  old 
man."  That  piece  I  still  partly  know  by  heart;  but 
history  was  what  I  liked  best,  and  if  I  finally  turned  to 
fiction  it  seems  to  have  been  in  the  dearth  of  histories 
that  merited  reading  after  Goldsmith's  Greece  and  Rome; 
except  Irving's  Conquest  of  Granada,  I  found  none  that 
I  could  read;  but  I  had  then  read  Don  Quixote  and 
Gulliver's  Travels,  and  had  heard  my  father  reading  aloud 
to  my  mother  the  poems  of  Scott  and  Moore.  Since 
he  seems  not  to  have  thought  of  any  histories  that  would 
meet  my  taste,  I  fancy  that  I  must  have  been  mainly 
left  to  my  own  choice  in  that  sort,  though  he  told  me  of 
the  other  sorts  of  books  which  I  read. 

I  should  be  interested  to  know  now  how  the  notion  of 
authorship  first  crept  into  my  mind,  but  I  do  not  in  the 
least  know.  I  made  verses,  I  even  wrote  plays  in  rhyme, 
but  until  I  attempted  an  historical  romance  I  had  no 
sense  of  literature  as  an  art.  As  an  art  which  one  might 
live  by,  as  by  a  trade  or  a  business,  I  had  not  the  slightest 
conception  of  it.  When  I  began  my  first  and  last  his 
torical  romance,  I  did  not  imagine  it  as  something  to  be 
read  by  others;  and  when  the  first  chapters  were  shown 
without  my  knowing,  I  was  angry  and  ashamed.  If  my 

20 


YEARS    OF    MY    YOUTH 

father  thought  there  was  anything  uncommon  in  my 
small  performances,  he  did  nothing  to  let  me  guess  it 
unless  I  must  count  the  instance  of  declaiming  Hallock's 
Marco  Bozzaris  before  a  Swedenborgian  minister  who  was 
passing  the  night  at  our  house.  Neither  did  my  mother 
do  anything  to  make  me  conscious,  if  she  was  herself  con 
scious  of  anything  out  of  the  common  in  what  I  was  try 
ing.  It  was  her  sacred  instinct  to  show  no  partiality 
among  her  children;  my  father's  notion  was  of  the  use 
that  could  be  combined  with  the  pleasure  of  life,  and  per 
haps  if  there  had  been  anything  different  in  my  life,  it  would 
not  have  tended  more  to  that  union  of  use  and  pleasure 
which  was  his  ideal. 

Much  in  the  environment  was  abhorrent  to  him,  and 
he  fought  the  local  iniquities  in  his  paper,  the  gambling, 
the  drunkenness  that  marred  the  mainly  moral  and 
religious  complexion  of  the  place.  In  A  Boy's  Town  I 
have  studied  with  a  fidelity  which  I  could  not  emulate 
here  the  whole  life  of  it  as  a  boy  sees  life,  and  I  must 
leave  the  reader  who  cares  for  such  detail  to  find  it  there. 
But  I  wish  again  to  declare  the  almost  unrivaled  fitness 
of  the  place  to  be  the  home  of  a  boy,  with  its  two  branches 
of  the  Great  Miami  River  and  their  freshets  in  spring, 
and  their  witchery  at  all  seasons;  with  its  Hydraulic 
Channels  and  Reservoirs,  its  stretch  of  the  Miami  Canal 
and  the  Canal  Basin  so  fit  for  swimming  in  summer  and 
skating  in  winter.  The  mills  and  factories  which  har 
nessed  the  Hydraulic  to  their  industries  were  of  resistless 
allure  for  the  boys  who  frequented  them  when  they  could 
pass  the  guard  of  "No  Admittance"  on  their  doors,  or 
when  they  were  not  foraging  among  the  fields  and  woods 
in  the  endless  vacations  of  the  schools.  Some  boys  left 
school  to  work  in  the  mills,  and  when  they  could  show  the 
loss  of  a  finger-joint  from  the  machinery  they  were  prized 

as  heroes.     The  Fourths  of  July,  the  Christmases  and 

21 


YEARS    OF    MY    YOUTH 

Easters  and  May-Days,  which  were  apparently  of  greater 
frequency  there  and  then  than  they  apparently  are  any 
where  now,  seemed  to  alternate  with  each  other  through 
the  year,  and  the  Saturdays  spread  over  half  the  week. 


The  experience  of  such  things  was  that  of  the  gen 
eralized  boy,  and  easy  to  recall,  but  the  experience  of 
the  specialized  boy  that  I  was  cannot  be  distinctly  re 
covered  and  cannot  be  given  in  any  order  of  time;  the 
events  are  like  dreams  in  their  achronic  simultaneity.  I 
ought  to  be  able  to  remember  when  fear  first  came  into 
my  life;  but  I  cannot.  I  am  aware  of  offering  as  a  be 
lated  substitute  for  far  earlier  acquaintance  with  it  the 
awe  which  I  dimly  shared  with  the  whole  community  at 
a  case  of  hydrophobia  occurring  there,  and  which  was  not 
lessened  by  hearing  my  father  tell  my  mother  of  the 
victim's  saying:  "I  have  made  my  peace  with  God;  you 
may  call  in  the  doctors."  I  doubt  if  she  relished  the 
involuntary  satire  as  he  did;  his  humor,  which  made  life 
easy  for  him,  could  not  always  have  been  a  comfort  to 
her.  Safe  in  the  philosophy  of  Swedenborg,  which  taught 
him  that  even  those  who  ended  in  hell  chose  it  their 
portion  because  they  were  happiest  in  it,  he  viewed  with 
kindly  amusement  the  religious  tumults  of  the  frequent 
revivals  about  him.  The  question  of  salvation  was  far  be 
low  that  of  the  annexation  of  Texas,  or  the  ensuing  war 
against  Mexico,  in  his  regard;  but  these  great  events  have 
long  ago  faded  into  national  history  from  my  contempo 
rary  consciousness,  while  a  tragical  effect  from  his  playful 
ness  remains  vivid  in  my  childish  memory.  I  have  already 
used  it  in  fiction,  as  my  wont  has  been  with  so  many  of  my 
experiences,  but  I  will  tell  again  how  my  mother  and  he 

were  walking  together  in  the  twilight,  with  me,  a  very 

22 


YEARS    OF    MY    YOUTH 

small  boy,  following,  and  my  father  held  out  to  me  behind 
his  back  a  rose  which  I  understood  I  was  to  throw  at  my 
mother  and  startle  her. 

My  aim  was  unfortunately  for  me  all  too  sure ;  the  rose 
struck  her  head,  and  when  she  looked  round  and  saw  me 
offering  to  run  away,  she  whirled  on  me  and  made  me  suf 
fer  for  her  fright  in  thinking  my  flower  was  a  bat,  while  my 
father  gravely  entreated,  "Mary,  Mary!"  She  could  not 
forgive  me  at  once,  and  my  heart  remained  sore,  for  my 
love  of  her  was  as  passionate  as  the  temper  I  had  from  her, 
but  while  it  continued  aching  after  I  went  to  bed,  she 
stole  up-stairs  to  me  and  consoled  me  and  told  me  how 
scared  she  had  been,  and  hardly  knew  what  she  was 
doing;  and  all  was  well  again  between  us. 

I  wish  I  could  say  how  dear  she  was  to  me  and  to  all 
her  children.  My  eldest  brother  and  she  understood  each 
other  best,  but  each  of  us  lived  in  the  intelligence  of  her 
which  her  love  created.  She  was  always  working  for  us, 
and  yet,  as  I  so  tardily  perceived,  living  for  my  father 
anxiously,  fearfully,  bravely,  with  absolute  trust  in  his 
goodness  and  righteousness.  While  she  listened  to  his 
reading  at  night,  she  sewed  or  knitted  for  us,  or  darned 
or  mended  the  day's  ravage  in  our  clothes  till,  as  a  great 
indulgence,  we  fell  asleep  on  the  floor.  If  it  was  summer 
we  fell  asleep  at  her  knees  on  the  front  door-step,  where 
she  had  sat  watching  us  at  our  play  till  we  dropped  worn 
out  with  it;  or  if  it  had  been  a  day  of  wild  excess  she  fol 
lowed  us  to  our  beds  early  and  washed  our  feet  with  her 
dear  hands,  and  soothed  them  from  the  bruises  of  the 
summer-long  shoelessness.  She  was  not  only  the  center 
of  home  to  me;  she  was  home  itself,  and  in  the  years  be 
fore  I  made  a  home  of  my  own,  absence  from  her  was  the 
homesickness,  or  the  fear  of  it,  which  was  always  haunting 
me.  As  for  the  quick  temper  (now  so  slow)  I  had  from 
her,  it  showed  itself  once  in  a  burst  of  reckless  fury  which 
3  23 


YEARS    OF    MY    YOUTH 

had  to  be  signalized  in  the  family  rule,  so  lenient  other 
wise,  by  a  circumstantial  whipping  from  my  father.  An 
other,  from  her,  for  going  in  swimming  (as  we  always  said 
for  bathing)  when  directly  forbidden,  seems  to  complete 
the  list  of  my  formal  punishments  at  their  hands  in  a 
time  when  fathers  and  mothers  were  much  more  of  Solo 
mon's  mind  in  such  matters  than  now. 

I  never  was  punished  in  any  sort  at  school  where  the 
frequent  scourging  of  other  boys,  mostly  boys  whom  I 
loved  for  something  kind  and  sweet  in  them,  filled  me 
with  anguish;  and  I  have  come  to  believe  that  a  blow 
struck  a  child  is  far  wickeder  than  any  wickedness  a  child 
can  do;  that  it  depraves  whoever  strikes  the  blow,  mother, 
or  father,  or  teacher,  and  that  it  inexpressibly  outrages 
the  young  life  confided  to  the  love  of  the  race.  I  know 
that  excuses  will  be  found  for  it,  and  that  the  perpetrator 
of  the  outrage  will  try  for  consolation  in  thinking  that  the 
child  quickly  forgets,  because  its  pathetic  smiles  so  soon 
follow  its  pathetic  tears;  but  the  child  does  not  forget; 
and  no  callousing  from  custom  can  undo  the  effect  in 
its  soul. 

From  the  stress  put  upon  behaving  rather  than  believ 
ing  in  that  home  of  mine  we  were  made  to  feel  that  wicked 
words  were  of  the  quality  of  wicked  deeds,  and  that  when 
they  came  out  of  our  mouths  they  depraved  us,  unless 
we  took  them  back.  I  have  not  forgotten,  with  any  de 
tail  of  the  time  and  place,  a  transgression  of  this  sort 
which  I  was  made  to  feel  in  its  full  significance.  My 
mother  had  got  supper,  and  my  father  was,  as  he  often 
was,  late  for  it,  and  while  we  waited  impatiently  for  him, 
I  came  out  with  the  shocking  wish  that  he  was  dead. 
My  mother  instantly  called  me  to  account  for  it,  and 
when  my  father  came  she  felt  bound  to  tell  him  what  I 
had  said.  He  could  then  have  done  no  more  than  grave 
ly  give  me  the  just  measure  of  my  offense;  and  his  ex- 

24 


YEARS    OF    MY    YOUTH 

planation  and  forgiveness  were  the  sole  event.  I  did  not 
remain  with  an  exaggerated  sense  of  my  sin,  though  in 
a  child's  helplessness  I  could  not  urge,  if  I  had  imagined 
urging,  that  my  .outburst  was  merely  an  aspiration  for 
unbelated  suppers,  and  was  of  the  nature  of  prayers  for 
rain,  which  good  people  cometimes  put  up  regardless  of 
consequences.  With  his  Swedenborgian  doctrine  of  de 
grees  in  sin,  my  father  might  have  thought  my  wild  words 
prompted  by  evil  spirits,  but  he  would  have  regarded 
them  as  qualitatively  rather  than  quantitatively  wicked, 
and  would  not  have  committed  the  dreadful  wrong  which 
elders  do  a  child  by  giving  it  a  sense  of  sinning  far  beyond 
its  worst  possible  willing.  As  to  conduct  his  teaching  was 
sometimes  of  an  inherited  austerity,  but  where  his  own 
personality  prevailed,  there  was  no  touch  of  Puritanism 
in  it. 

Our  religious  instruction  at  home  was  not  very  stated, 
though  it  was  abundant,  and  it  must  have  been  because 
we  children  ourselves  felt  it  unseemly  not  to  go,  like  other 
children,  to  Sunday-school  that  we  were  allowed  to  satisfy 
our  longing  for  conformity  by  going  for  a  while  to  the 
Sunday-school  of  the  Baptist  church,  apparently  because 
it  was  the  nearest.  We  got  certain  blue  tickets  and  cer 
tain  red  ones  for  memorizing  passages  from  the  New 
Testament,  but  I  remember  much  more  distinctly  the 
muscular  twitching  in  the  close-shaven  purplish  cheek  of 
the  teacher  as  he  nervously  listened  with  set  teeth  for 
the  children's  answers,  than  anything  in  our  Scripture 
lessons.  I  had  been  received  with  three  or  four  brothers 
and  sisters  into  the  Swedenborgian  communion  by  a  pass 
ing  New  Church  minister,  but  there  were  no  services  of 
our  recondite  faith  in  Hamilton,  and  we  shared  in  no  pub 
lic  worship  after  my  mother  followed  my  father  from  the 
Methodist  society.  Out  of  curiosity  and  a  solemn  joy 
in  its  ceremonial,  I  sometimes  went  to  the  Catholic  church, 

25 


YEARS    OF    MY    YOUTH 

where  my  eyes  clung  fascinated  to  the  life-large  effigy  of 
Christ  bleeding  on  His  cross  against  the  eastern  wall;  but 
I  have  more  present  now  the  sense  of  walks  in  the  woods 
on  Sunday,  with  the  whole  family,  and  of  the  long,  sweet 
afternoons  so  spent  in  them. 

If  we  had  no  Sabbaths  in  our  house,  and  not  very 
recognizable  Sundays,  we  were  strictly  forbidden  to  do 
anything  that  would  seem  to  trifle  with  the  scruples  of 
others.  We  might  not  treat  serious  things  unseriously; 
we  were  to  swear  not  at  all ;  and  in  the  matter  of  bywords 
we  were  allowed  very  little  range,  though  for  the  hardness 
of  our  hearts  we  were  suffered  to  say  such  things  as,  "Oh, 
hang  it!"  or  even,  " Confound  it  all!"  in  extreme  cases, 
such  as  failing  to  make  the  family  pony  open  his  mouth 
for  bridling,  or  being  bitten  by  the  family  rabbits,  or 
butted  over  by  the  family  goat.  In  such  points  of  secular 
behavior  we  might  be  better  or  worse;  but  in  matters  of 
religious  toleration  the  rule  was  inflexible;  the  faith  of 
others  was  sacred,  and  it  was  from  this  early  training, 
doubtless,  that  I  was  able  in  after  life  to  regard  the 
occasional  bigotry  of  agnostic  friends  with  toleration. 

During  the  years  of  my  later  childhood,  a  few  public 
events  touched  my  consciousness.  I  was  much  con 
cerned  in  the  fortunes  of  the  Whig  party  from  the  candi 
dacy  of  Henry  Clay  in  1844  to  the  fusion  of  the  anti- 
slavery  Whigs  with  the  Freesoil  party  after  their  bolt 
of  the  Taylor  nomination  in  1848,  when  I  followed  my 
father  as  far  as  a  boy  of  eleven  could  go.  He  himself 
went  so  far  as  to  sell  his  newspaper  and  take  every  risk 
for  the  future  rather  than  support  a  slave-holding  candi 
date  who  had  been  chosen  for  his  vote-winning  qualities 
as  a  victorious  general  in  the  Mexican  War.  I  did  not 
abhor  that  aggression  so  much  as  my  father  only  because 
I  could  not  understand  how  abhorrent  it  was;  but  it 
began  to  be  a  trouble  to  me  from  the  first  mention  of  the 

26 


YEARS    OF   MY   YOUTH 

Annexation  of  Texas,  a  sufficiently  dismaying  mystery, 
and  it  afflicted  me  in  early  fixing  my  lot  with  the  righteous 
minorities  which  I  may  have  sometimes  since  been  over- 
proud  to  be  of.  Besides  such  questions  of  national  interest 
I  was  aware  of  other  things,  such  as  the  French  Revolu 
tion  of  1848;  but  this  must  have  been  wholly  through 
sympathy  with  my  father's  satisfaction  in  the  flight  of 
Louis  Philippe  and  the  election  of  the  poet  Lamartine  to 
be  the  head  of  the  provisional  government.  The  notion 
of  provisional  I  relegated  to  lasting  baffle  in  its  more 
familiar  association  with  the  stock  of  corn-meal  and 
bran  in  the  feed-stores,  though  I  need  but  have  asked  in 
order  to  be  told  what  it  meant.  The  truth  is  I  was  pre 
occupied  about  that  time  with  the  affairs  of  High  Olym 
pus,  as  I  imagined  them  from  the  mythology  which  I  was 
reading,  and  with  the  politics  of  Rome  and  Athens,  as  I 
conceived  them  from  the  ever-dear  histories  of  Goldsmith. 
The  exploits  of  the  Ingenious  Gentleman  of  La  Mancha 
had  much  to  do  in  distracting  me  from  the  movement  of 
events  in  Mexico,  and  at  the  same  time  I  was  enlarging 
my  knowledge  of  human  events  through  Gulliver's  Travels 
and  Poe's  Tales  of  the  Grotesque  and  Arabesque. 

My  father  had  not  only  explained  to  me  the  satire 
which  underlay  Gulliver's  Travels;  he  told  me  so  much 
too  indignantly  of  De  Foe's  appropriation  of  Selkirk's 
narrative,  that  it  long  kept  me  from  reading  Robinson 
Crusoe;  but  he  was,  as  I  have  divined  more  and  more, 
my  guide  in  that  early  reading  which  widened  with  the 
years,  though  it  kept  itself  preferably  for  a  long  time  to 
history  and  real  narratives.  He  was  of  such  a  liberal  mind 
that  he  scarcely  restricted  my  own  forays  in  literature, 
and  I  think  that  sometimes  he  erred  on  that  side;  he 
may  have  thought  no  harm  could  come  to  me  from  the 
literary  filth  which  I  sometimes  took  into  my  mind,  since 

it  was  in  the  nature  of  sewage  to  purify  itself.     He  gave 

27 


YEARS   OF   MY   YOUTH 

me  very  little  direct  instruction,  and  he  did  not  insist 
on  my  going  to  school  when  I  preferred  the  printing- 
office.  All  the  time,  perhaps,  I  was  getting  such  school 
ing  as  came  from  the  love  of  literature,  which  was  the 
daily  walk  and  conversation  of  our  very  simple  home, 
and  somehow  protected  it  from  the  sense  of  narrow  means 
and  the  little  hope  of  larger.  My  father's  income  from 
his  paper  was  scarcely  over  a  thousand  dollars  a  year, 
but  this  sufficed  for  his  family,  then  of  seven  children, 
and  he  was  of  such  a  sensitive  pride  as  to  money,  that 
he  would  hardly  ask  for  debts  due  him,  much  less  press 
for  their  payment;  so  that  when  he  parted  with  his  paper 
he  parted  with  the  hope  of  much  money  owing  him  for 
legal  and  even  official  advertising  and  for  uncounted  de 
linquent  subscriptions.  Meanwhile  he  was  earning  this 
money  by  the  work  of  his  head  and  hand;  and  though 
I  must  always  love  his  memory  for  his  proud  delicacy, 
I  cannot  forget  that  this  is  not  a  world  where  people 
dun  themselves  for  the  debts  they  owe.  What  is  to  be 
said  of  such  a  man  is  that  his  mind  is  not  on  the  things 
that  make  for  prosperity;  but  if  we  were  in  adversity  we 
never  knew  it  by  that  name.  My  mother  did  the  whole 
work  of  her  large  household,  and  gave  each  of  us  the 
same  care  in  health  and  sickness,  in  sickness  only  making 
the  sufferer  feel  that  he  was  her  favorite;  in  any  other 
case  she  would  have  felt  such  a  preference  wicked.  Some 
times  she  had  a  hired  girl]  as  people  then  and  there  called 
the  sort  of  domestic  that  in  New  England  would  have 
been  called  a  help.  But  it  must  have  been  very  sel 
dom,  for  two  girls  alone  left  record  of  themselves:  a 
Dutch  girl  amusingly  memorable  with  us  children  be 
cause  she  called  her  shoes  skoes,  and  claimed  to  have 
come  to  America  in  a  skip;  and  a  native  girl,  who  took 
charge  of  us  when  our  mother  was  on  one  of  her  home 
sick  visits  Up-the-River,  and  became  lastingly  abhorrent 

28 


YEARS    OF    MY    YOUTH 

for  the  sort  of  insipid  milk-gravy  she  made  for  the  beef 
steak,  and  for  the  nightmare  she  seemed  to  have  every 
night,  when  she  filled  the  house  and  made  our  blood  run 
cold  with  a  sort  of  wild  involuntary  yodeling. 

Apparently  my  mother's  homesickness  mounted  from 
time  to  time  in  an  insupportable  crisis;  but  perhaps  she 
did  not  go  Up-the-River  so  often  as  it  seemed.  She  al 
ways  came  back  more  contented  with  the  home  which  she 
herself  was  for  us;  once,  as  my  perversely  eclectic  memory 
records,  it  was  chiefly  because  one  could  burn  wood  in 
Hamilton,  but  had  to  burn  coal  at  Martin's  Ferry,  where 
everything  was  smutched  by  it.  In  my  old  age,  now,  I 
praise  Heaven  for  that  home  which  I  could  not  know  apart 
from  her;  and  I  wish  I  could  recall  her  in  the  youth  which 
must  have  been  hers  when  I  began  to  be  conscious  of  her 
as  a  personality;  I  know  that  she  had  thick  brown  Irish 
hair  and  blue  eyes,  and  high  German  cheek-bones,  and 
as  a  girl  she  would  have  had  such  be'auty  as  often  goes 
with  a  certain  irregularity  of  feature;  but  to  me  before 
my  teens  she  was,  of  course,  a  very  mature,  if  not  elderly 
person,  with  whom  I  could  not  connect  any  notion  of  looks 
except  such  as  shone  from  her  care  and  love.  Though 
her  intellectual  and  spiritual  life  was  in  and  from  my 
father,  she  kept  always  a  certain  native  quality  of  speech 
and  a  rich  sense  in  words  like  that  which  marked  her 
taste  in  soft  stuffs  and  bright  colors.  In  the  hard  life  of 
her  childhood  in  the  backwoods  she  was  sent  to  an  acad 
emy  in  the  nearest  town,  but  in  the  instant  anguish  of 
homesickness  she  walked  ten  miles  back  to  the  log  cabin 
where  at  night,  as  she  would  tell  us,  you  could  hear  the 
wolves  howling.  She  had  an  innate  love  of  poetry;  she 
could  sing  some  of  those  songs  of  Burns  and  Moore  which 
people  sang  then.  I  associate  them  with  her  voice  in  the 
late  summer  afternoons;  for  it  was  at  night  that  she 

listened  to  my  father's  reading  of  poetry  or  fiction.    When 

29 


YEARS    OF    MY    YOUTH 

they  were  young,  before  and  after  their  marriage,  he  kept 
a  book,  as  people  sometimes  did  in  those  days,  where  he 
wrote  in  the  scrupulous  handwriting  destined  to  the  de 
formity  of  over-use  in  later  years,  such  poems  of  Byron 
or  Cowper  or  Moore  or  Burns  as  seemed  appropriate  to 
their  case,  and  such  other  verse  as  pleased  his  fancy.  It 
is  inscribed  (for  it  still  exists)  To  Mary,  and  with  my  in 
ner  sense  I  can  hear  him  speaking  to  her  by  that  sweet 
name,  with  the  careful  English  enunciation  which  sepa 
rated  its  syllables  into  Ma-ry. 


VI 

My  mother  was  an  honored  guest  on  one  or  other  of 
my  uncles'  boats  whenever  she  went  on  her  homesick 
visits  Up-the-River,  and  sometimes  we  children  must 
have  gone  with  her.  Later  in  my  boyhood,  when  I  was 
nine  or  ten  years  old,  my  father  took  me  to  Pittsburg  and 
back,  on  the  boat  of  the  jolliest  of  those  uncles,  and  it 
was  then  that  I  first  fully  realized  the  splendor  of  the 
world  where  their  lives  were  passed.  No  doubt  I  have 
since  seen  nobler  sights  than  the  mile-long  rank  of  the 
steamboats  as  they  lay  at  the  foot  of  the  landings  in  the 
cities  at  either  end  of  our  voyage,  but  none  of  these  ex 
celling  wonders  remains  like  that.  All  the  passenger- 
boats  on  the  Ohio  were  then  side-wheelers,  and  their  lofty 
chimneys  towering  on  either  side  of  their  pilot-houses 
were  often  crenelated  at  the  top,  with  wire  ropes  be 
tween  them  supporting  the  effigies  of  such  Indians  as 
they  were  named  for.  From  time  to  time  one  of  the 
majestic  craft  pulled  from  the  rank  with  the  clangor  of 
its  mighty  bell,  and  the  mellow  roar  of  its  whistle,  and 
stood  out  in  the  yellow  stream,  or  arrived  in  like  state  to 
find  a  place  by  the  shore.  The  wide  slope  of  the  landing 
was  heaped  with  the  merchandise  putting  off  or  taking 

30 


YEARS    OF    MY    YOUTH 

on  the  boats,  amidst  the  wild  and  whirling  curses  of  the 
mates  and  the  insensate  rushes  of  the  deck-hands  stag 
gering  to  and  fro  under  their  burdens.  The  swarming 
drays  came  and  went  with  freight,  and  there  were  huck 
ster  carts  of  every  sort;  peddlers,  especially  of  oranges, 
escaped  with  their  lives  among  the  hoofs  and  wheels, 
and  through  the  din  and  turmoil  passengers  hurried 
aboard  the  boats,  to  repent  at  leisure  their  haste  in  trust 
ing  the  advertised  hour  of  departure.  It  was  never 
known  that  any  boat  left  on  time,  and  I  doubt  if  my 
uncle's  boat,  the  famous  New  England  No.  2,  was  an 
exception  to  the  rule,  as  my  father  perfectly  understood 
while  he  delayed  on  the  wharf,  sampling  a  book-peddler's 
wares,  or  talking  with  this  bystander  or  that,  while  I 
waited  for  him  on  board  in  an  anguish  of  fear  lest  he 
should  be  left  behind. 

There  was  a  measure  of  this  suffering  for  me  through 
out  the  voyage  wherever  the  boat  stopped,  for  his  in 
satiable  interest  in  every  aspect  of  nature  and  human 
nature  urged  him  ashore  and  kept  him  there  till  the  last 
moment  before  the  gang-plank  was  drawn  in.  It  was  use 
less  for  him  to  argue  with  me  that  my  uncle  would  not 
allow  him  to  be  left,  even  if  he  should  forget  himself  so 
far  as  to  be  in  any  danger  of  that.  I  could  not  believe 
that  a  disaster  so  dire  should  not  befall  us,  and  I  suffered 
a  mounting  misery  till  one  day  it  mounted  to  frenzy.  I  do 
not  know  whether  there  were  other  children  on  board, 
but  except  for  the  officers  of  the  boat,  I  was  left  mostly 
to  myself,  and  I  spent  my  time  dreamily  watching  the 
ever-changing  shore,  so  lost  in  its  wild  loveliness  that 
once  when  I  woke  from  my  reverie  the  boat  seemed  to 
have  changed  her  course,  and  to  be  going  down-stream 
instead  of  up.  It  was  in  this  crisis  that  I  saw  my  father 
descending  the  gang-plank,  and  while  I  was  urging  his 
return  in  mute  agony,  a  boat  came  up  outside  of  us  to 

31 


YEARS    OF    MY    YOUTH 

wait  for  her  chance  of  landing.  I  looked  and  read  on 
her  wheel-house  the  name  New  England,  and  then  I 
abandoned  hope.  By  what  fell  necromancy  I  had  been 
spirited  from  my  uncle's  boat  to  another  I  could  not  guess, 
but  I  had  no  doubt  that  the  thing  had  happened,  and  I 
was  flying  down  from  the  hurricane  roof  to  leap  aboard 
that  boat  from  the  lowermost  deck  when  I  met  my  uncle 
coming  as  quietly  up  the  gangway  as  if  nothing  had  hap 
pened.  He  asked  what  was  the  matter,  and  I  gasped  out 
the  fact;  he  did  not  laugh;  he  had  pity  on  me  and  gravely 
explained,  "That  boat  is  the  New  England:  this  is  the 
New  England  No.  2"  and  at  these  words  I  escaped  with 
what  was  left  of  my  reason. 

I  had  been  the  prey  of  that  obsession  which  every  one 
has  experienced  when  the  place  where  one  is  disorients 
itself  and  west  is  east  and  north  is  south.  Sometimes 
this  happens  by  a  sudden  trick  within  the  brain,  but  I 
lived  four  years  in  Columbus  and  as  many  in  Venice  with 
out  once  being  right  as  to  the  points  of  the  compass  in 
my  nerves,  though  my  wits  were  perfectly  convinced. 
Once  I  was  months  in  a  place  where  I  suffered  from  this 
obsession,  when  I  found  myself  returning  after  a  journey 
with  the  north  and  south  quite  where  they  should  be; 
and,  "Now,"  I  exulted,  "I  will  hold  them  to  their  duty." 
I  kept  my  eyes  firmly  fixed  upon  the  station,  as  the  train 
approached;  then,  without  my  lifting  my  gaze,  the  north 
was  back  again  in  the  place  of  the  south,  and  the  vain 
struggle  was  over.  Only  the  other  day  I  got  out  of  a  car 
going  north  in  Fourth  Avenue,  and  then  saw  it  going  on 
south;  and  it  was  only  by  noting  which  way  the  house 
numbers  increased  that  I  could  right  myself. 

I  suppose  my  father  promised  a  reform  that  should 
appease  my  unreason,  but  whether  he  could  deny  him 
self  those  chances  of  general  information  I  am  not  so 

sure ;  we  may  have  both  expected  too  much  of  each  other. 

32 


YEARS   OF   MY   YOUTH 

As  I  was  already  imaginably  interested  in  things  of  the 
mind  beyond  my  years,  he  often  joined  me  in  my  perusal 
of  the  drifting  landscape  and  made  me  look  at  this  or 
that  feature  of  it,  but  he  afterward  reported  at  home 
that  he  never  could  get  anything  from  me  but  a  brief 
"  Yes,  indeed,"  in  response.  That  amused  him,  yet  I  do 
not  think  I  should  have  disappointed  him  so  much  if  I 
could  have  told  him  I  was  losing  nothing,  but  that  our 
point  of  view  was  different.  The  soul  of  a  child  is  a  secret 
to  itself,  and  in  its  observance  of  life  there  is  no  foretelling 
what  it  shall  loose  or  what  it  shall  hold.  I  do  not  believe 
that  anything  which  was  of  use  to  me  was  lost  upon  me, 
but  what  I  chiefly  remember  now  is  my  pleasure  in  the 
log  cabins  in  the  woods  on  the  shores,  with  the  blue  smoke 
curling  on  the  morning  or  the  evening  air  from  their  chim 
neys.  My  heart  was  taken  with  a  yearning  for  the  wilder 
ness  such  as  the  coast-born  boy  feels  for  the  sea;  in  the 
older  West  the  woods  called  to  us  with  a  lure  which  it 
would  have  been  rapture  to  obey ;  the  inappeasable  passion 
for  their  solitude  drove  the  pioneer  into  the  forest,  and  it 
was  still  in  the  air  we  breathed.  But  my  lips  were  sealed, 
for  the  generations  cannot  utter  themselves  to  each  other 
till  the  strongest  need  of  utterance  is  past. 

I  used  to  sit  a  good  deal  on  the  hurricane-deck  or  in 
the  pilot-house,  where  there  was  often  good  talk  among 
the  pilots  or  the  boat's  officers,  and  where  once  I  heard 
with  fascination  the  old  Scotch  pilot,  Tom  Lindsay,  tell 
ing  of  his  own  boyhood  in  the  moors,  and  of  the  sheep 
lost  in  the  drifting  snows;  that  also  had  the  charm  of 
the  wilderness;  but  I  did  not  feel  the  sadness  of  his  say 
ing  once,  as  we  drifted  past  a  row  of  crimson-headed 
whisky  barrels  on  a  wharf -boat,  "Many  a  one  of  those  old 
Red  Eyes  I've  helped  to  empty,"  or  imagine  the  far  and 
deep  reach  of  the  words  which  remained  with  me.  Some 
where  in  the  officers'  quarters  I  found  a  sea  novel,  which 

33 


YEARS    OF    MY    YOUTH 

I  read  partly  through,  but  I  have  not  finished  The  Cruise 
of  the  Midge,  to  this  day,  though  I  believe  that  as  sea 
novels  go  it  merits  reading.  When  I  was  not  listening  to 
the  talk  in  the  pilot-house,  or  looking  at  the  hills  drift 
ing  by,  I  was  watching  the  white-jacketed  black  cabin- 
boys  setting  the  tables  for  dinner  in  the  long  saloon  of 
the  boat.  It  was  built,  after  a  fashion  which  still  holds 
in  the  Western  boats,  with  a  gradual  lift  of  the  stem 
and  stern  and  a  dip  midway  which  somehow  enhanced 
the  charm  of  the  perspective  even  to  the  eyes  of  a  hungry 
boy.  Dinner  was  at  twelve,  and  the  tables  began  to  be 
set  between  ten  and  eleven,  with  a  rhythmical  movement 
of  the  negroes  as  they  added  each  detail  of  plates  and 
cups  and  knives  and  glasses,  and  placed  the  set  dishes 
of  quivering  jelly  at  discrete  intervals  under  the  crystals 
of  the  chandeliers  softly  tinkling  with  the  pulse  of  the 
engines.  At  last  some  more  exalted  order  of  waiters 
appeared  with  covered  platters  and  spirit-lamps  burning 
under  them,  and  set  them  down  before  the  places  of  the 
captain  and  his  officers.  Then  the  bell  was  sounded  for 
the  passengers;  the  waiters  leaned  forward  between  these 
when  they  were  seated;  at  a  signal  from  their  chief  they 
lifted  the  covers  of  the  platters  and  vanished  in  a  shin 
ing  procession  up  the  saloon,  while  each  passenger  fell 
upon  the  dishes  nearest  himself. 

About  the  time  I  had  become  completely  reconciled 
to  the  conditions  of  the  voyage,  which  the  unrivaled 
speed  of  the  New  England  No.  2  shortened  to  a  three- 
days'  run  up  the  river,  I  woke  one  morning  to  find  her 
lying  at  the  Pittsburg  landing,  and  when  I  had  called  my 
father  to  come  and  share  my  wonder  at  a  stretch  of  boats 
as  long  as  that  at  Cincinnati,  and  been  mimicked  by  a 
cabin-boy  for  my  unsophisticated  amazement,  nothing 
remained  for  me  but  to  visit  the  houses  of  the  aunts 

and  uncles  abounding  in  cousins.     Of  the  homeward  voy- 

34 


YEARS    OF    MY    YOUTH 

age  nothing  whatever  is  left  in  my  memory;  but  I  know 
we  came  back  on  the  New  England  No.  2,  though  we 
must  have  left  the  boat  and  taken  it  again  on  a  second 
trip  at  Wheeling,  after  a  week  spent  with  my  mother's 
people  at  Martin's  Ferry.  My  father  wished  me  to 
see  the  glass-foundries  and  rolling-mills  which  interested 
him  so  much  more  than  me;  he  could  not  get  enough 
of  those  lurid  industries  which  I  was  chiefly  concerned 
in  saving  myself  from.  I  feigned  an  interest  in  the  pro 
cesses  out  of  regard  for  him,  but  Heaven  knows  I  cared 
nothing  for  the  drawing  of  wire  or  the  making  of  nails, 
and  only  a  very  little  for  the  blowing  of  the  red,  vitre 
ous  bubbles  from  the  mouths  of  long  steel  pipes.  With 
weariness  I  escaped  from  these  wonders,  but  with  no 
such  misery  as  I  eluded  the  affection  of  the  poor  mis 
shapen,  half-witted  boy  who  took  a  fancy  to  me  at  the 
house  of  some  old  friends  of  my  father  where  we  had 
supper  after  the  long  day.  With  uncouth  noises  of  wel 
come,  and  with  arms  and  legs  flying  controllessly  about, 
he  followed  me  through  a  day  that  seemed  endless.  His 
family  of  kindly  English  folk,  from  the  life-long  habit  of 
him,  seemed  unaware  of  anything  strange,  and  I  could 
not  for  shame  and  for  fear  of  my  father's  reproach  betray 
my  suffering.  The  evening  began  unduly  to  fall,  thick 
with  the  blackness  of  the  coal  smoke  poured  from  the 
chimneys  of  those  abhorred  foundries,  and  there  was  a 
fatal  moment  when  my  father's  friends  urged  him  to 
stay  the  night  and  I  thought  he  would  consent.  The 
dreams  of  childhood  are  oftenest  evil,  but  mine  holds 
record  of  few  such  nightmares  as  this. 


VII 

After  my  father  sold  his  paper  and  was  casting  about 

for  some  other  means  of  livelihood,  there  were  occasional 

35 


YEARS    OF    MY    YOUTH 

shadows  cast  by  his  anxieties  in  the  bright  air  of  my 
childhood.  Again  I  doubt,  if  any  boy  ever  lived  a  gladder 
time  than  I  lived  in  Hamilton,  Butler  County,  Ohio: 
words  that  I  write  still  when  I  try  a  new  pen,  because  I 
learned  to  write  them  first,  and  love  them  yet.  When  we 
went  to  live  in  Dayton,  where  my  father  managed  to  make 
a  sort  of  progressive  purchase  of  a  newspaper  which  he 
never  quite  paid  for,  our  skies  changed.  It  was  after 
an  interval  of  experiment  in  one  sort  and  another,  which 
amused  his  hopeful  ingenuity,  but  ended  in  nothing, 
that  he  entered  upon  this  long  failure.  The  Dayton 
Transcript  when  he  began  with  it  was  a  tri-weekly,  but 
he  made  it  a  daily,  and  this  mistake  infected  the  whole 
enterprise.  It  made  harder  work  for  us  all  than  we  had 
known  before;  and  the  printing-office,  which  had  been  my 
delight,  became  my  oppression  after  the  brief  moment 
of  public  schooling  which  I  somehow  knew.  But  before 
the  change  from  tri-weekly  to  daily  in  our  paper,  I  had 
the  unstinted  advantage  of  a  school  of  morals  as  it  then 
appeared  among  us. 

The  self-sacrificing  company  of  players  who  suffered 
for  the  drama  through  this  first  summer  of  our  life  in 
Dayton  paid  my  father  for  their  printing  in  promises 
which  he  willingly  took  at  their  face  value,  and  in  tickets 
which  were  promptly  honored  at  the  door.  As  nearly 
as  I  can  make  out,  I  was  thus  enabled  to  go  every  night 
to  the  theater,  in  a  passion  for  it  which  remains  with  me 
ardent  still.  I  saw  such  plays  of  Shakespeare  as  "  Mac 
beth"  and  "  Othello,"  then  the  stage  favorites,  and 
"Richard  III."  and  evermore  " Richard  III."  I  saw 
such  other  now  quite  forgotten  favorites  as  Kotzebue's 
" Stranger"  and  Sheridan  Knowles's  "Wife,"  and  such 
moving  actions  of  unknown  origin  as  "Barbarossa"  and 
"The  Miser  of  Marseilles,"  with  many  screaming  farces 

such  as  helped  fill  every  evening  full  with  at  least  three 

36 


YEARS    OF    MY    YOUTH 

plays.  There  was  also  at  that  time  a  native  drama 
almost  as  acceptable  to  our  public  everywhere  as  "Uncle 
Tom's  Cabin"  afterward  became.  It  seemed  as  if  our 
public  would  never  tire  of  "A  Glance  at  New  York," 
with  its  horribly  vulgar  stage  conceptions  of  local  char 
acter,  Mose  the  fireman  and  Lize  his  girl,  and  Sikesy  and 
their  other  companions,  which  drift  up  before  me  now  like 
wraiths  from  the  Pit,  and  its  events  of  street-fighting  and 
I  dare  say  heroic  rescues  from  burning  buildings  by  the 
volunteer  fire  companies  of  the  day.  When  it  appeared 
that  the  public  might  tire  of  the  play,  the  lively  fancy  of 
the  theater  supplied  a  fresh  attraction  in  it,  and  the 
character  of  Little  Mose  was  added.  How  this  must 
have  been  played  by  what  awful  young  women  eager  to 
shine  at  any  cost  in  their  art,  I  shudder  to  think,  and  it 
is  with  "sick  and  scornful  looks  averse"  that  I  turn  from 
the  remembrance  of  my  own  ambition  to  shine  in  that 
drama.  My  father  instantly  quenched  the  histrionic 
spark  in  me  with  loathing;  but  I  cannot  say  whether  this 
was  before  or  after  the  failure  of  a  dramatic  attempt  of 
his  own  which  I  witnessed,  much  mystified  by  the  sense 
of  some  occult  relation  to  it.  Certainly  I  did  not  know 
that  the  melodrama  which  sacrificed  his  native  to  his 
adoptive  patriotism  in  the  action,  and  brought  off  the 
Americans  victors  over  the  British  in  a  sea-fight,  was 
his  work;  and  probably  it  was  the  adaptation  of  some 
tale  then  much  read.  Very  likely  he  trusted,  in  writing 
it,  to  the  chance  which  he  always  expected  to  favor  the 
amateur  in  taking  up  a  musical  instrument  strange  to 
him.  He  may  even  have  dreamed  of  fortune  from  it; 
but  after  one  performance  of  it  the  management  seems 
to  have  gone  back  to  such  old  public  favorites  as  Shake 
speare  and  Sheridan  Knowles.  Nothing  was  said  of  it  in 
the  family;  I  think  some  of  the  newspapers  were  not  so 

silent;   but  I  am  not  sure  of  this. 

37 


YEARS    OF    MY    YOUTH 

My  father  could,  of  course,  be  wiser  for  others  than 
for  himself;  the  public  saved  him  from  becoming  a 
dramatist,  but  it  was  he  who  saved  me  from  any  remotest 
chance  of  becoming  an  actor,  and  later  from  acquiring 
the  art  of  the  prestidigitator.  The  only  book  which  I  can 
be  sure  of  his  taking  from  me  was  a  manual  professing 
to  teach  this  art,  which  I  had  fallen  in  with.  The  days  of 
those  years  in  Dayton  were  in  fact  very  different  from  the 
days  in  Hamilton  when  I  was  reaching  out  near  and  far 
to  feed  my  fancy  for  fable  and  my  famine  for  fact.  I 
read  no  new  books  which  now  occur  to  me  by  name, 
though  I  still  kept  my  interest  in  Greek  mythology  and 
gave  something  of  my  scanty  leisure  to  a  long  poem  in 
the  quatrains  of  Gray's  Elegy  based  upon  some  divine 
event  of  it.  The  course  of  the  poem  was  lastingly  ar 
rested  by  a  slight  attack  of  the  cholera  which  was  then 
raging  in  the  town  and  filling  my  soul  with  gloom.  My 
dear  mother  thought  it  timely  to  speak  with  me  of  the 
other  world;  but  so  far  from  reconciling  me  to  the  thought 
of  it,  I  suppose  she  could  not  have  found  a  boy  in  all  Day 
ton  more  unwilling  to  go  to  heaven.  She  was  forced  to 
drop  her  religious  consolations  and  to  assure  me  that  she 
had  not  the  least  fear  of  my  dying. 

It  was  certainly  not  the  fault  of  the  place  that  we  were, 
first  and  last,  rather  unhappy  there.  For  one  thing,  we 
were  used  to  the  greater  ease  and  simplicity  of  a  small 
town  like  Hamilton,  and  Dayton  was  a  small  city  with 
the  manners  and  customs  of  cities  in  those  days:  that  is, 
there  was  more  society  and  less  neighborhood,  and  neither 
my  father  nor  my  mother  could  have  cared  for  society. 
They  missed  the  wont  of  old  friends;  there  were  no  such 
teas  as  she  used  to  give  her  neighbors,  with  a  quilting, 
still  dimly  visioned,  at  the  vanishing-point  of  the  per 
spective;  our  social  life  was  almost  wholly  in  our  Sunday- 
evening  visits  to  the  house  of  my  young  aunt  whose  hus- 

38 


YEARS    OF   MY    YOUTH 

band  was  my  father's  youngest  brother.  The  pair  were 
already  in  the  shadow  of  their  early  death,  and  in  the 
sorrow  of  losing  their  children  one  after  another  till  one 
little  cousin  alone  remained.  I  had  not  yet  begun  to 
make  up  romances  about  people  in  my  mind,  but  this 
uncle  and  aunt  were  my  types  of  worldly  splendor  in  the 
setting  of  the  lace  curtains  and  hair-cloth  chairs  of  their 
parlor,  with  her  piano  and  his  flute  for  other  aesthetic 
grace.  He  was  so  much  younger  that  he  had  a  sort  of 
filial  relation  to  my  father,  and  they  were  both  very  sweet 
to  my  mother,  always  lonely  outside  of  her  large  family. 
As  usual,  we  lived  in  more  than  one  house,  but  the  first 
was  very  acceptable  because  of  its  nearness  to  the  canal; 
the  yard  stretched  behind  it  quite  to  the  tow-path,  with 
an  unused  stable  between,  which  served  us  boys  for  circus- 
rehearsals,  and  for  dressing  after  a  plunge.  As  in  a 
dream,  I  can  still  see  my  youngest  brother  rushing  through 
this  stable  one  day  and  calling  out  that  he  was  going  to 
jump  into  the  canal,  with  me  running  after  him  and  then 
dimly  seeing  him  as  he  groped  along  the  bottom,  with 
me  diving  and  saving  him  from  drowning.  Already, 
with  the  Hamilton  facilities,  I  could  hardly  help  being  a 
good  swimmer,  and  at  Dayton  I  spent  much  of  my  leis 
ure  in  the  canal.  Within  the  city  limits  we  had  to  wear 
some  sort  of  bathing-dress,  and  we  preferred  going  with 
a  crowd  of  other  boys  beyond  the  line  where  no  such 
formality  was  expected  of  us.  On  the  way  to  and  fro 
we  had  to  pass  a  soap-factory,  where  the  boys  employed 
in  it  swarmed  out  at  sight  of  us  stealing  along  under  the 
canal  bank,  and  in  the  strange  outlawry  of  boyhood  mur 
derously  stoned  us,  but  somehow  did  not  kill  us.  I  do 
not  know  what  boys  we  played  with,  but  after  we  had  paid 
the  immemorial  penalty  of  the  stranger,  and  fought  for 
our  standing  among  them,  the  boys  of  our  neighborhood 
were  kind  enough.  One,  whose  father  was  a  tobacconist, 
4  39 


YEARS    OF   MY   YOUTH 

abetted  our  efforts  to  learn  smoking  by  making  cigars 
flavored  with  cinnamon-drops;  I  suppose  these  would 
have  been  of  more  actual  advantage  to  me  if  I  had  learned 
to  like  smoking.  When  we  went  from  his  house  to 
another,  in  what  may  have  been  a  better  quarter,  we 
made  no  friends  that  I  can  remember,  and  we  were  never 
so  gay.  In  fact,  a  sense  of  my  father's  adversity  now  be 
gan  to  penetrate  to  his  older  children,  with  the  knowl 
edge  of  our  mother's  unhappiness  from  it. 

I  am  not  following  any  chronological  order  here,  and 
I  should  not  be  able  to  date  my  aesthetic  devotion  to  a 
certain  gas-burner  in  the  window  of  a  store  under  the 
printing-office.  It  was  in  the  form  of  a  calla-lily,  with 
the  flame  forking  from  the  tongue  in  its  white  cup;  and 
I  could  never  pass  it,  by  day  or  night,  without  stopping 
to  adore  it.  If  I  could  be  perfectly  candid,  I  should  still 
own  my  preference  of  it  to  the  great  painting  of  Adam 
and  Eve  by  Dubuffe,  then  shown  throughout  our  simple- 
hearted  commonwealth.  This  had  the  double  attraction 
of  a  religious  interest  and  the  awful  novelty  of  the  nude, 
for  the  first  time  seen  by  untraveled  American  eyes;  the 
large  canvas  was  lighted  up  so  as  to  throw  the  life-size 
figures  into  strong  relief,  and  the  spectator  strickenly 
studied  them  through  a  sort  of  pasteboard  binocle  sup 
plied  for  the  purpose.  If  that  was  the  way  our  first 
parents  looked  before  the  Fall,  and  the  Bible  said  it  was, 
there  was  nothing  to  be  urged  against  it;  but  many  kind 
people  must  have  suffered  secret  misgivings  at  a  sight 
from  which  a  boy  might  well  shrink  ashamed,  with  a 
feeling  that  the  taste  of  Eden  was  improved  by  the  Fall. 
I  had  no  such  joy  in  it  as  in  the  dramas  which  I  witnessed 
in  the  same  hall;  as  yet  there  was  nothing  in  Dayton 
openly  declared  a  theater. 

The  town  had  many  airs  of  a  city,  and  there  were  even 

some  policemen  who  wore  a  silver-plated  star  inside  their 

40 


YEARS    OF    MY    YOUTH 

coats  for  proof  of  their  profession.  There  were  water 
works,  and  there  was  gas  everywhere  for  such  as  would 
pay  the  charge  for  it.  My  father  found  the  expense  of 
piping  the  printing-office  too  great  for  his  means,  or  else 
he  preferred  falling  back  upon  his  invention,  and  instead 
of  the  usual  iron  tubes  he  had  the  place  fitted  with  tin 
tubes,  at  much  less  cost.  Perhaps  the  cost  was  equalized 
in  the  end  by  the  leaking  of  these  tubes,  which  was  so 
constant  that  we  breathed  gas  by  day  as  well  as  burned 
it  by  night.  We  burned  it  a  good  deal,  for  our  tri-weekly 
was  now  changed  to  a  daily,  and  a  morning  paper  at  that. 
Until  eleven  o'clock  I  helped  put  the  telegraphic  de 
spatches  (then  a  new  and  proud  thing  with  us)  into  type, 
and  between  four  and  five  o'clock  in  the  morning  I  was 
up  and  carrying  papers  to  our  subscribers.  The  stress 
of  my  father's  affairs  must  have  been  very  sore  for  him 
to  allow  this,  and  I  dare  say  it  did  not  last  long,  but  while 
it  lasted  it  was  suffering  which  must  make  me  forever  ten 
der  of  those  who  overwork,  especially  the  children  who 
overwork.  The  suffering  was  such  that  when  my  brother, 
who  had  not  gone  to  bed  till  much  later,  woke  me  after 
my  five  or  six  hours'  sleep,  I  do  not  now  know  how  I  got 
myself  together  for  going  to  the  printing-office  for  the 
papers  and  making  my  rounds  in  the  keen  morning  air. 
When  Sunday  came,  and  I  could  sleep  as  late  as  I  liked, 
it  was  bliss  such  as  I  cannot  tell  to  He  and  rest,  and  rest, 
and  rest!  We  were  duteous  children  and  willing;  my 
brother  knew  of  the  heavy  trouble  hanging  over  us  and  I 
was  aware  of  the  hopeless  burden  of  debt  which  our 
father  was  staggering  under  and  my  mother  was  carry 
ing  on  her  heart;  and  when  I  think  of  it,  and  of  the  wide 
spread,  never-ending  struggle  for  life  which  it  was  and 
is  the  type  of,  I  cannot  but  abhor  the  economic  condi 
tions  which  we  still  suppose  an  essential  of  civilization. 

Lest  these  facts  should  make  too  vivid  a  call  upon  the 

41 


YEARS    OF    MY    YOUTH 

reader's  compassion,  I  find  it  advisable  to  remember  here 
an  instance  of  hard-heartedness  in  me  which  was  worthier 
the  adamantine  conscience  of  some  full-grown  moralist 
than  a  boy  of  my  age.  There  was  a  poor  girl,  whose 
misfortune  was  known  to  a  number  of  families  where  she 
was  employed  as  a  seamstress,  and  the  more  carefully 
treated  because  of  her  misfortune.  Among  others  my 
mother  was  glad  to  give  her  work;  and  she  lived  with 
us  like  one  of  ourselves,  of  course  sitting  at  table  with 
us  and  sharing  in  such  family  pleasures  as  we  knew.  She 
was  the  more  to  be  pitied  because  her  betrayer  was  a 
prominent  man  who  bore  none  of  the  blame  for  their 
sin;  but  when  her  shame  became  known  to  me  I  began 
a  persecution  of  the  poor  creature  in  the  cause  of  social 
purity.  I  would  not  take  a  dish  from  her  at  table,  or  hand 
her  one;  I  would  not  speak  to  her,  if  I  could  help  it,  or 
look  at  her;  I  left  the  room  when  she  came  into  it;  and 
I  expressed  by  every  cruelty  short  of  words  my  right 
eous  condemnation.  I  was,  in  fact,  society  incarnate  in 
the  attitude  society  takes  toward  such  as  she.  Heaven 
knows  how  I  came  by  such  a  devilish  ideal  of  propriety, 
and  I  cannot  remember  how  the  matter  quite  ended,  but 
I  seem  to  remember  a  crisis,  in  which  she  begged  my 
mother  with  tears  to  tell  her  why  I  treated  her  so;  and 
I  was  put  to  bitter  shame  for  it.  It  could  not  be  ex 
plained  to  me  how  tragical  her  case  was;  I  must  have 
been  thought  too  young  for  the  explanation;  but  I  doubt 
if  any  boy  of  twelve  is  too  young  for  the  right  knowl 
edge  of  such  things;  he  already  has  the  wrong. 

My  wish  at  times  to  learn  some  other  business  was 
indulged  by  a  family  council,  and  my  uncle  made  a 
place  for  me  in  his  drug-store,  where,  as  long  as  the  novelty 
lasted,  I  was  happy  in  the  experiments  with  chemicals 
permitted  to  me  and  a  fellow-apprentice.  Mainly  we 

were  busied  in  putting  up  essence  of  peppermint  and  pare- 

42 


YEARS    OF    MY    YOUTH 

goric  and  certain  favorite  medicinal  herbs;  and  when  the 
first  Saturday  evening  came,  my  companion  received  his 
weekly  wage  over  the  counter,  and  I  expected  mine,  but 
the  bookkeeper  smiled  and  said  he  would  have  to  see  my 
uncle  about  that;  in  the  end,  it  appeared  that  by  the 
convention  with  my  father  I  was  somehow  not  to  draw 
any  salary.  Both  my  uncle  and  he  treated  the  matter 
with  something  of  the  bookkeeper's  smiling  slight,  and 
after  an  interval,  now  no  longer  appreciable,  I  found  my 
self  in  the  printing-office  again.  I  was  not  sorry,  and  yet 
I  had  liked  the  drug  business  so  far  as  I  had  gone  in  it, 
and  I  liked  that  old  bookkeeper,  though  he  paid  me  no 
money.  How,  after  a  life  of  varied  experiences,  he  had 
lodged  at  last  in  the  comfortable  place  he  held  I  no  longer 
know,  if  I  ever  knew.  He  had  been  at  one  time  what 
would  once  have  been  called  a  merchant  adventurer  in 
various  seas;  and  he  had  been  wrecked  on  the  Galapagos 
Islands,  where  he  had  feasted  on  the  famous  native 
turtle,  now  extinct,  with  a  relish  which  he  still  smacked 
his  lips  in  remembering. 

This  episode,  which  I  cannot  date,  much  antedated  the 
period  of  my  father's  business  failure,  though  his  struggles 
against  it  must  have  already  begun;  they  began,  in  fact, 
from  the  moment  of  his  arrival  in  Dayton,  and  the  freest 
and  happiest  hours  we  knew  there  were  when  the  long 
strain  ended  in  the  inevitable  break.  Then  there  was  an 
interval,  I  do  not  know  how  great,  but  perhaps  of  months, 
when  there  was  a  casting  about  for  some  means  of  living, 
and  to  this  interval  belongs  somehow  the  employment 
of  my  brother  and  myself  in  a  German  printing-office, 
such  as  used  to  be  found  in  every  considerable  Ohio  town. 
I  do  not  know  what  we  did  there,  but  I  remember  the 
kindly  German  printer-folk,  and  the  merry  times  we  had 
with  them,  in  the  smoke  of  their  pipes  and  the  warmth 

of  their  stove  heated  red  against  the  autumnal  cold.     I 

43 


YEARS    OF   MY    YOUTH 

explore  my  memory  in  vain  for  proof  that  my  father 
had  some  job-printing  interest  in  this  German  office,  but 
I  remember  my  interest  in  the  German  type  and  its  dif 
ference  from  the  English.  I  was  yet  far  from  any  interest 
in  the  German  poetry  which  afterward  became  one  of  my 
passions,  and  there  is  no  one  now  left  alive  whom  I  can 
ask  whether  the  whole  incident  was  fact,  or  not,  rather,  the 
sort  of  dream  which  all  the  past  becomes  when  we  try 
to  question  it. 

What  I  am  distinctly  aware  of,  through  a  sense  of 
rather  sullen  autumnal  weather,  is  that  a  plan  for  our 
going  into  the  country  evolved  itself  in  full  detail  between 
my  father  and  uncle.  My  uncle  was  to  supply  the  capital 
for  the  venture,  and  was  finally,  with  two  other  uncles,  to 
join  my  father  on  a  milling  privilege  which  they  had 
bought  at  a  point  on  the  Little  Miami  River,  where  all 
the  families  were  to  be  settled.  In  the  mean  time  my 
father  was  to  have  charge  of  a  grist-mill  and  sawmill  on 
the  property  till  they  could  be  turned  into  a  paper-mill 
and  a  sort  of  communal  settlement  of  suitable  people 
could  be  gathered.  He  had  never  run  a  sawmill  or  a 
grist-mill,  much  less  evoked  a  paper-mill  from  them;  but 
neither  had  he  ever  gathered  a  community  of  choice 
spirits  for  the  enjoyment  of  a  social  form  which  enthu 
siasts  like  Robert  Owen  had  dreamed  into  being,  and  then 
non-being,  in  the  Middle  West  in  those  or  somewhat 
earlier  days.  What  was  definite  and  palpable  in  the 
matter  was  that  he  must  do  something,  and  that  he  had 
the  heart  and  hope  for  the  experiment. 


VIII 

I  have  told  the  story  of  this  venture  in  a  little  book 
called  My  Year  in  a  Log  Cabin,  printed  twenty-odd  years 

ago,  and  I  cannot  do  better  now  than  let  it  rehearse  it- 

44 


YEARS    OF    MY    YOUTH 

self  here  from  those  pages,  with  such  slight  change  or 
none  as  insists.  For  my  father,  whose  boyhood  had  been 
passed  in  the  new  country,  where  pioneer  customs  and 
traditions  were  still  rife,  it  was  like  renewing  the  wild 
romance  of  those  days  to  take  up  once  more  the  life  in 
a  log  cabin  interrupted  by  many  years'  sojourn  in  matter- 
of-fact  dwellings  of  frame  and  brick.  It  was  the  fond 
dream  of  his  boys  to  realize  the  trials  and  privations 
which  he  had  painted  for  them  in  rosy  hues,  and  even 
if  the  only  clapboarded  dwelling  at  the  mills  had  not 
been  occupied  by  the  miller,  we  should  have  disdained 
it  for  the  log  cabin  which  we  made  our  home  till  we  could 
build  a  new  house. 

Our  cabin  stood  close  upon  the  road,  but  behind  it 
broadened  a  corn-field  of  eighty  acres.  They  still  built 
log  cabins  for  dwellings  in  that  region  at  the  time,  but 
ours  must  have  been  nearly  half  a  century  old  when  we 
went  into  it.  It  had  been  recently  vacated  by  an  old 
poor-white  Virginian  couple,  who  had  long  occupied  it, 
and  we  decided  that  it  needed  some  repairs  to  make  it 
habitable  even  for  a  family  inured  to  hardship  by  daunt 
less  imaginations,  and  accustomed  to  retrospective  dis 
comforts  of  every  kind. 

So  before  the  family  all  came  out  to  it  a  deputation  of 
adventurers  put  it  in  what  rude  order  they  could.  They 
glazed  the  narrow  windows,  they  relaid  the  rotten  floor, 
they  touched  (too  sketchily,  as  it  afterward  appeared) 
the  broken  roof,  and  they  papered  the  walls  of  the  ground- 
floor  rooms.  Perhaps  it  was  my  father's  love  of  literature 
which  inspired  him  to  choose  newspapers  for  this  purpose ; 
at  any  rate,  he  did  so,  and  the  effect,  as  I  remember,  had 
its  decorative  qualities.  He  had  used  a  barrel  of  papers 
from  the  nearest  post-office,  where  they  had  been  refused 
by  people  to  whom  they  had  been  experimentally  sent  by 
the  publishers,  and  the  whole  first  page  was  taken  up  by 

45 


YEARS    OF    MY    YOUTH 

a  story,  which  broke  off  in  the  middle  of  a  sentence  at  the 
foot  of  the  last  column,  and  tantalized  us  forever  with 
fruitless  conjecture  as  to  the  fate  of  the  hero  and  heroine. 

The  cabin,  rude  as  it  was,  was  not  without  its  sophisti 
cations,  its  concessions  to  the  spirit  of  modern  luxury. 
The  logs  it  was  built  of  had  not  been  left  rounded,  as  they 
grew,  but  had  been  squared  in  a  sawmill,  and  the  crevices 
between  them  had  not  been  chinked  with  moss  and 
daubed  with  clay  in  true  backwoods  fashion,  but  plastered 
with  mortar,  and  the  chimney,  instead  of  being  a  struc 
ture  of  clay-covered  sticks,  was  laid  in  courses  of  stone. 
Within,  however,  it  was  all  that  could  be  desired  by 
the  most  romantic  of  pioneer  families.  It  was  six  feet 
wide  and  a  yard  deep,  its  cavernous  maw  would  easily 
swallow  a  back-log  eighteen  inches  through,  and  we  piled 
in  front  the  sticks  of  hickory  cord-wood  as  high  as  we  liked. 
We  made  a  perfect  trial  of  it  when  we  came  out  to  put  the 
cabin  in  readiness  for  the  family,  and  when  the  hickory  had 
dropped  into  a  mass  of  tinkling,  snapping,  bristling  embers 
we  laid  our  rashers  of  bacon  and  our  slices  of  steak  upon 
them,  and  tasted  the  flavors  of  the  wildwood  in  the  cap 
tured  juices.  At  night  we  laid  our  mattresses  on  the  sweet 
new  oak  plank  of  the  floor,  and  slept  hard — in  every  sense. 

In  due  time  the  whole  family  took  up  its  abode  in  the 
cabin.  The  household  furniture  had  been  brought  out 
and  bestowed  in  its  scanty  space,  the  bookcase  had  been 
set  up,  and  the  unbound  books  left  easily  accessible  in 
barrels.  There  remained  some  of  our  possessions  to  fol 
low,  chief  of  which  was  the  cow;  for  in  those  simple  days 
people  kept  cows  in  town,  and  it  fell  to  me  to  help  my 
father  drive  ours  out  to  her  future  home.  We  got  on  fa 
mously,  talking  of  the  wayside  things  so  beautiful  in  the 
autumnal  day,  panoplied  in  the  savage  splendor  of  its 
painted  leaves,  and  of  the  books  and  authors  so  dear  to 
the  boy  who  limped  barefooted  by  his  father's  side,  with 

46 


YEARS    OF    MY    YOUTH 

his  eye  on  the  cow  and  his  mind  on  Cervantes  and  Shake 
speare.  But  the  cow  was  very  slow — far  slower  than  the 
boy's  thoughts — and  it  had  fallen  night  and  was  already 
thick  dark  when  we  had  made  the  twelve  miles  and  stood 
under  the  white-limbed  phantasmal  sycamores  beside  the 
tail-race  of  the  grist-mill,  and  questioned  how  we  should 
get  across  with  our  charge.  We  did  not  know  how 
deep  the  water  was,  but  we  knew  it  was  very  cold,  and 
we  would  rather  not  wade  it.  The  only  thing  to  do 
seemed  to  be  for  one  of  us  to  run  up  to  the  sawmill, 
cross  the  head-race  there,  and  come  back  to  receive  the 
cow  on  the  other  side  of  the  tail-race.  But  the  boy  could 
not  bring  himself  either  to  go  or  to  stay. 

The  kind-hearted  father  urged,  but  he  would  not  com 
pel;  you  cannot  well  use  force  with  a  boy  when  you 
have  been  talking  literature  and  philosophy  for  half  a 
clay  with  him.  We  could  see  the  lights  in  the  cabin  cheer 
fully  twinkling,  and  we  shouted  to  those  within,  but  no 
one  heard  us.  We  called  and  called  in  vain.  Nothing  but 
the  cold  rush  of  the  tail-race,  the  dry  rustle  of  the  syca 
more-leaves,  and  the  homesick  lowing  of  the  cow  replied. 
We  determined  to  drive  her  across,  and  pursue  her  with 
sticks  and  stones  through  the  darkness  beyond,  and  then 
run  at  the  top  of  our  speed  to  the  sawmill,  and  get  back 
to  take  her  in  custody  again.  We  carried  out  our  part 
of  the  plan  perfectly,  but  the  cow  had  not  entered  into 
it  with  intelligence  or  sympathy.  When  we  reached 
the  other  side  of  the  tail-race  again  she  was  nowhere 
to  be  found,  and  no  appeals  of  "Boss"  or  "Suky"  or 
"Suboss"  availed.  She  must  have  instantly  turned, 
and  retraced,  in  the  darkness  which  seemed  to  have 
swallowed  her  up,  the  weary  steps  of  the  day,  for  she  was 
found  in  her  old  home  in  town  the  next  morning.  At  any 
rate,  she  had  abandoned  the  father  to  the  conversation  of 
his  son,  for  the  time  being,  and  the  son  had  nothing  to  say. 

47 


YEARS    OF    MY    YOUTH 

I  do  not  remember  now  just  how  it  was  that  we  came 
by  the  different  "animals  of  the  horse  kind,"  as  my  father 
called  them,  which  we  housed  in  an  old  log  stable  not 
far  from  our  cabin.  They  must  have  been  a  temporary 
supply  until  a  team  worthy  our  new  sky-blue  wagon  could 
be  found.  One  of  them  was  a  colossal  sorrel,  inexorably 
hide-bound,  whose  barrel,  as  horsemen  call  the  body, 
showed  every  hoop  upon  it.  He  had  a  feeble,  fool 
ish  whimper  of  a  voice,  and  we  nicknamed  him  "Baby." 
His  companion  was  a  dun  mare,  who  had  what  my  father 
at  once  called  an  italic  foot,  in  recognition  of  the  emphatic 
slant  at  which  she  carried  it  when  upon  her  unwilling 
travels.  Then  there  was  a  small,  self-opinionated  gray 
pony,  which  was  of  no  service  conjecturable  after  this 
lapse  of  time.  We  boys  rode  him  barebacked,  and  he 
used  to  draw  a  buggy,  which  he  finally  ran  away  with. 
I  suppose  we  found  him  useful  in  the  representation  of 
some  of  the  Indian  fights  which  we  were  always  dramatiz 
ing,  and  I  dare  say  he  may  have  served  our  turn  as  an 
Arab  charger,  when  the  Moors  of  Granada  made  one  of 
their  sallies  upon  the  camp  of  the  Spaniards,  and  dis 
charged  their  javelins  into  it;  their  javelins  were  the  long, 
admirably  straight  and  slender  ironweeds  that  grew  by 
the  river.  This  menagerie  was  constantly  breaking 
bounds  and  wandering  off;  and  was  chiefly  employed  in 
hunting  itself  up,  its  different  members  taking  turns  in 
remaining  in  the  pasture  or  stable,  to  be  ridden  after 
those  that  had  strayed  into  the  woods. 

The  origin  of  a  large  and  eloquent  flock  of  geese  is  lost 
in  an  equal  obscurity.  I  recall  their  possession  simply  as 
an  accomplished  fact,  and  I  associate  their  desolate  cries 
with  the  windy  dark  of  rainy  November  nights,  so  that 
they  must  at  least  have  come  into  our  hands  after  the 
horses.  They  were  fenced  into  a  clayey  area  next  the 
cabin  for  safe-keeping,  where,  perpetually  waddling  about 


YEARS    OF    MY    YOUTH 

in  a  majestic  disoccupation,  they  patted  the  damp  ground 
down  to  the  hardness  and  smoothness  of  a  brick-yard. 
Throughout  the  day  they  conversed  tranquilly  together, 
but  by  night  they  woke,  goose  after  goose,  to  send  forth  a 
long  clarion  alarum,  blending  in  a  general  concert  at  last, 
to  assure  one  another  of  their  safety.  We  must  have 
intended  to  pluck  them  in  the  spring,  but  they  stole  their 
nests  early  in  March,  and  entered  upon  the  nurture  of 
their  young  before  we  could  prevent  it;  and  it  would  then 
have  been  barbarous  to  pluck  these  mothers  of  families. 
We  had  got  some  pigs  from  our  old  Virginian  prede 
cessors,  and  these  kept,  as  far  as  they  could,  the  domestic 
habits  in  which  that  affectionate  couple  had  indulged 
them.  They  would  willingly  have  shared  our  fireside 
with  us,  humble  as  it  was,  but,  being  repelled,  they  took 
up  their  quarters  on  cold  nights  at  the  warm  base  of  the 
chimney  without,  where  we  could  hear  them,  as  long  as 
we  kept  awake,  disputing  the  places  next  to  the  stones. 
All  this  was  horrible  to  my  mother,  whose  housewifely 
instincts  were  perpetually  offended  by  the  rude  conditions 
of  our  life,  and  who  justly  regarded  it  as  a  return  to  a 
state  which,  if  poetic,  was  also  not  far  from  barbaric. 
But  boys  take  every  natural  thing  as  naturally  as  sav 
ages,  and  we  never  thought  our  pigs  were  other  than 
amusing.  In  that  country  pigs  were  called  to  their  feed 
with  long  cries  of  "Pig,  pig,  pooee,  poe-e-e!"  but  ours  were 
taught  to  come  at  a  whistle,  and,  on  hearing  it,  would 
single  themselves  out  from  the  neighbors'  pigs,  and  come 
rushing  from  all  quarters  to  the  scattered  corn  with  an 
intelligence  we  were  proud  of. 


IX 

As  long  as  the  fall  weather  lasted,  and  well  through  the 

mild  winter  of  that  latitude,  our  chief  recreation,  where 

49 


YEARS    OF    MY    YOUTH 

all  our  novel  duties  were  delightful,  was  hunting  with  the 
long,  smooth-bore  shot-gun  which  had  descended  laterally 
from  one  of  our  uncles,  and  supplied  the  needs  of  the  whole 
family  of  boys  in  the  chase.  Never  less  than  two  of  us 
went  out  with  it  at  once,  and  generally  there  were  three. 
This  enabled  us  to  beat  up  the  game  over  a  wide  extent 
of  country,  and  while  the  eldest  did  the  shooting,  left  the 
others  to  rush  upon  him  as  soon  as  he  fired,  with  tumultu 
ous  cries  of,  "Did  you  hit  it?  Did  you  hit  it?"  We  fell 
upon  the  wounded  squirrels  which  we  brought  down  on 
rare  occasions,  and  put  them  to  death  with  what  I  must 
now  call  a  sickening  ferocity.  If  sometimes  the  fool  dog, 
the  weak-minded  Newfoundland  pup  we  were  rearing, 
rushed  upon  the  game  first,  and  the  squirrel  avenged  his 
death  upon  the  dog's  nose,  that  was  pure  gain,  and  the 
squirrel  had  the  applause  of  his  other  enemies.  Yet 
we  were  none  of  us  cruel;  we  never  wantonly  killed 
things  that  could  not  be  eaten;  we  should  have  thought 
it  sacrilege  to  shoot  a  robin  or  a  turtle-dove,  but  we 
were  willing  to  be  amused,  and  these  were  the  chances 
of  war. 

The  woods  were  full  of  squirrels,  which  especially 
abounded  in  the  woods-pastures,  as  we  called  the  lovely 
dells  where  the  greater  part  of  the  timber  was  thinned 
out  to  let  the  cattle  range  and  graze.  They  were  of  all 
sorts — gray,  and  black,  and  even  big  red  fox-squirrels,  a 
variety  I  now  suppose  extinct.  When  the  spring  opened 
we  hunted  them  in  the  poplar  woods,  whither  they  re 
sorted  in  countless  numbers  for  the  sweetness  in  the  cups 
of  the  tulip-tree  blossoms.  I  recall  with  a  thrill  one 
memorable  morning  in  such  woods — early,  after  an  over 
night  rain,  when  the  vistas  hung  full  of  a  delicate  mist 
that  the  sun  pierced  to  kindle  a  million  fires  in  the  drops 
still  pendulous  from  leaf  and  twig.  I  can  smell  the  tulip- 
blossoms  and  the  odor  of  the  tree-bark  yet,  and  the  fresh, 

50 


YEARS    OF    MY    YOUTH 

strong  fragrance  of  the  leafy  mold  under  my  bare  feet; 
and  I  can  hear  the  rush  of  the  squirrels  on  the  bark  of 
the  trunks,  or  the  swish  of  their  long,  plunging  leaps  from 
bough  to  bough  in  the  air-tops. 

In  a  region  where  the  corn-fields  and  wheat-fields  were 
often  fifty  and  sixty  acres  in  extent  there  was  a  plenty 
of  quail,  but  I  remember  only  one  victim  to  my  gun. 
We  set  figure-four  traps  to  catch  them;  but  they  were 
shrewder  arithmeticians  than  we,  and  solved  these  prob 
lems  without  harm  to  themselves.  When  they  began  to 
mate,  and  the  air  was  full  of  their  soft,  amorous  whistling, 
we  searched  for  their  nests,  and  had  better  luck,  though 
we  were  forbidden  to  rob  the  nests  when  we  found  them; 
and  in  June,  when  a  pretty  little  mother  strutted  across 
the  lanes  at  the  head  of  her  tiny  brood,  we  had  to  content 
ourselves  with  the  near  spectacle  of  her  cunning  counter 
feit  of  disability  at  sight  of  us,  fluttering  and  tumbling  in 
the  dust  till  her  chicks  could  hide  themselves.  We  had 
read  of  that  trick,  and  were  not  deceived;  but  we  were 
charmed  the  same. 

It  is  a  trick  that  all  birds  know,  and  I  had  it  played 
upon  me  by  the  mother  snipe  and  mother  wild  duck  that 
haunted  our  dam,  as  well  as  by  the  quail.  With  the  snipe, 
once,  I  had  a  fancy  to  see  how  far  the  mother  would  carry 
the  ruse,  and  so  ran  after  her;  but  in  doing  this  I  trod  on 
one  of  her  young — a  soft,  gray  mite,  not  distinguishable 
from  the  gray  pebbles  where  it  ran.  I  took  it  tenderly 
up  in  my  hand,  and  it  is  a  pang  to  me  yet  to  think  how 
it  gasped  once  and  died.  A  boy  is  a  strange  mixture — as 
the  man  who  comes  after  him  is.  I  should  not  have 
minded  knocking  over  that  whole  brood  of  snipes  with 
my  gun,  if  I  could;  but  this  poor  little  death  was  some 
how  very  personal  in  its  appeal. 

I  had  no  such  regrets  concerning  the  young  wild  ducks, 

which,   indeed,   I  had  no  such  grievous  accident  with. 

51 


YEARS    OF   MY    YOUTH 

I  left  their  mother  to  flounder  and  flutter  away  as  she 
would,  and  took  to  the  swamp  where  her  young  sought 
refuge  from  me.  There  I  spent  half  a  day  wading  about 
in  waters  that  were  often  up  to  my  waist  and  full  of 
ugly  possibilities  of  mud-turtles  and  water-snakes,  try 
ing  to  put  my  hand  on  one  of  the  ducklings.  They  rose 
everywhere  else,  and  dived  again  after  a  breath  of  air; 
but  at  last  one  of  them  came  up  in  my  very  grasp.  It 
did  not  struggle,  but  how  its  wild  heart  bounded  against 
my  hand!  I  carried  it  home  to  show  it  and  boast  of 
my  capture,  and  then  I  took  it  back  to  its  native  swamp. 
It  dived  instantly,  and  I  hope  it  found  its  bereaved  family 
somewhere  under  the  water. 

The  center  of  our  life  in  the  cabin  was,  of  course,  the 
fireplace,  whose  hugeness  and  whose  mighty  fires  remained 
a  wonder  with  us.  There  was  a  crane  in  the  chimney  and 
dangling  pot-hooks,  and  until  the  cooking-stove  could  be 
set  up  in  an  adjoining  shed  the  cooking  had  to  be  done  on 
the  hearth,  and  the  bread  baked  in  a  Dutch  oven  in  the 
hot  ashes.  We  had  always  heard  of  this  operation,  which 
was  a  necessity  of  early  days;  and  nothing  else,  perhaps, 
realized  them  so  vividly  for  us  as  the  loaf  laid  in  the  iron- 
lidded  skillet,  which  was  then  covered  with  ashes  and 
heaped  with  coals. 

I  am  not  certain  that  the  bread  tasted  any  better  for 
the  historical  romance  of  its  experience,  or  that  the  corn- 
meal,  mixed  warm  from  the  mill  and  baked  on  an  oak 
plank  set  up  before  the  fire,  had  merits  beyond  the  hoe- 
cake  of  art;  but  I  think  there  can  be  no  doubt  that  new 
corn  grated  from  the  cob  while  still  in  the  milk,  and 
then  molded  and  put  in  like  manner  to  brown  in  the 
glow  of  such  embers,  would  still  have  the  sweetness  that 
was  incomparable  then.  When  the  maple  sap  started  in 
February,  we  tried  the  scheme  we  had  cherished  all  winter 

of  making  with  it  tea  which  should  be  in  a  manner  self- 

52 


YEARS    OF    MY    YOUTH 

sugared.  But  the  scheme  was  a  failure — we  spoiled  the 
sap  without  sweetening  the  tea. 

We  sat  up  late  before  the  big  fire  at  night,  our  faces 
burning  in  the  glow,  and  our  backs  and  feet  freezing  in 
the  draught  that  swept  in  from  the  imperfectly  closing 
door,  and  then  we  boys  climbed  to  our  bed  in  the  loft. 
We  reached  it  by  a  ladder,  which  we  should  have  been 
glad  to  pull  up  after  us  as  a  protection  against  Indians 
in  the  pioneer  fashion;  but,  with  the  advancement  of 
modern  luxury,  the  ladder  had  been  nailed  to  the  floor. 
When  we  were  once  aloft,  however,  we  were  in  a  domain 
sacred  to  the  past.  The  rude  floor  rattled  and  wavered 
loosely  under  our  tread,  and  the  window  in  the  gable 
stood  open  or  shut  at  its  own  will.  There  were  cracks  in 
the  shingles,  through  which  we  could  see  the  stars,  when 
there  were  stars,  and  which,  when  the  first  snow  came, 
let  the  flakes  sift  in  upon  the  floor. 

Our  barrels  of  paper-covered  books  were  stowed  away 
in  that  loft,  and,  overhauling  them  one  day,  I  found  a 
paper  copy  of  the  poems  of  a  certain  Henry  W.  Longfellow, 
then  wholly  unknown  to  me;  and  while  the  old  grist-mill, 
whistling  and  wheezing  to  itself,  made  a  vague  music  in 
my  ears,  my  soul  was  filled  with  this  new,  strange  sweet 
ness.  I  read  the  "Spanish  Student"  there,  and  the 
"Coplas  de  Manrique,"  and  the  solemn  and  ever-beautiful 
"Voices  of  th'e  Night."  There  were  other  books  in  those 
barrels,  but  these  spirited  me  again  to  Spain,  where  I 
had  already  been  with  Irving,  and  led  me  to  attack  fit 
fully  the  old  Spanish  grammar  which  had  been  knocking 
about  our  house  ever  since  my  father  bought  it  from  a 
soldier  of  the  Mexican  War. 

But  neither  these  nor  any  other  books  -made  me  dis 
contented  with  the  boy's  world  about  me.  They  made 
it  a  little  more  populous  with  visionary  shapes,  but  that 

was  well,  and  there  was  room  for  them  all.     It  was  not 

53 


YEARS    OF    MY    YOUTH 

darkened  with  cares,  and  the  duties  of  it  were  not  many. 
By  this  time  we  older  boys  had  our  axes,  and  believed 
ourselves  to  be  clearing  a  piece  of  woods  which  covered 
a  hill  belonging  to  the  milling  property.  The  timber  was 
black-walnut  and  oak  and  hickory,  and  I  cannot  think  we 
made  much  inroad  in  it;  but  we  must  have  felled  some 
of  the  trees,  for  I  remember  helping  to  cut  them  into  saw- 
logs  with  the  cross-cut  saw,  and  the  rapture  we  had  in 
starting  our  logs  from  the  brow  of  the  hill  and  watching 
their  whirling  rush  to  the  bottom.  We  experimented,  as 
boys  will,  and  we  felled  one  large  hickory  with  the  saw 
instead  of  the  axe,  and  scarcely  escaped  with  our  lives 
when  it  suddenly  split  near  the  bark,  and  the  butt  shot 
out  between  us.  I  preferred  buckeye  and  sycamore  trees 
for  my  own  axe;  they  were  of  no  use  when  felled,  but 
they  chopped  so  easily. 

They  grew  abundantly  on  the  island  which  formed 
another  feature  of  our  oddly  distributed  property.  This 
island  was  by  far  its  most  fascinating  feature,  and  for  us 
boys  it  had  the  charm  and  mystery  which  have  in  every 
land  and  age  endeared  islands  to  the  heart  of  man.  It 
was  not  naturally  an  island,  but  had  been  made  so  by  the 
mill-races  bringing  the  water  from  the  dam,  and  emptying 
into  the  river  again  below  the  mills.  It  was  flat,  and 
half  under  water  in  every  spring  freshet,  but  it  had  pre 
cious  areas  grown  up  to  tall  ironweeds,  which,  withering  and 
hardening  in  the  frost,  supplied  us  with  the  darts  for  our 
Indian  fights.  The  island  was  always  our  battle-ground, 
and  it  resounded  in  the  long  afternoons  with  the  war- 
cries  of  the  encountering  tribes.  We  had  a  book  in  those 
days  called  Western  Adventure,  which  was  made  up  of 
tales  of  pioneer  and  frontier  life,  and  we  were  constantly 
reading  ourselves  back  into  that  life.  This  book,  and 
Howe's  Collections  for  the  History  of  Ohio,  were  full  of 

stories  of  the  backwoodsmen  and  warriors  who  had  made 

54 


YEARS    OF    MY    YOUTH 

our  state  a  battle-ground  for  nearly  fifty  years,  and  our  life 
in  the  log  cabin  gave  new  zest  to  the  tales  of  "  Simon 
Kenton,  the  Pioneer,"  and  " Simon  Girty,  the  Renegade"; 
of  the  captivity  of  Crawford,  and  his  death  at  the  stake; 
of  the  massacre  of  the  Moravian  Indians  at  Gnaden- 
hiitten;  of  the  defeat  of  St.  Clair  and  the  victory  of 
Wayne;  of  a  hundred  other  wild  and  bloody  incidents  of 
our  annals.  We  read  of  them  at  night  till  we  were  afraid 
to  go  up  the  ladder  to  the  ambuscade  of  savages  in  our 
loft,  but  we  fought  them  over  by  day  with  undaunted 
spirit.  With  our  native  romance  I  sometimes  mingled 
from  my  own  reading  a  strain  of  Old  World  poetry,  and 
"Hamet  el  Zegri"  and  the  "  Unknown  Spanish  Knight," 
encountered  in  the  Vega  before  Granada  on  our  island, 
while  Adam  Poc  and  the  Indian  chief  Bigfoot  were  taking 
breath  from  their  deadly  struggle  in  the  waters  of  the 
Ohio. 


When  the  spring  opened  we  broke  up  the  sod  on  a  more 
fertile  part  of  the  island,  and  planted  a  garden  there  be 
side  our  field  of  corn.  We  planted  long  rows  of  sweet- 
potatoes,  and  a  splendid  profusion  of  melons,  which  duly 
came  up  with  their  empty  seed-shells  fitted  like  helmets 
over  their  heads,  and  were  mostly  laid  low  the  next  day 
by  the  cutworms  wh  ch  swarmed  in  the  upturned  sod. 
But  the  sweet-potatoes  had  better  luck.  Better  luck  I 
did  not  think  it  then;  their  rows  seemed  interminable 
to  a  boy  set  to  clear  them  of  purslane  with  his  hoe;  though 
I  do  not  now  imagine  they  were  necessarily  a  day's  jour 
ney  in  length.  Neither  could  the  corn-field  beside  them 
have  been  very  vast;  but  again  reluctant  boyhood  has 
a  different  scale  for  the  measurement  of  such  things,  and 
perhaps  if  I  were  now  set  to  hill  it  up  I  might  think 
differently  about  its  size. 
5  55 


YEARS    OF    MY    YOUTH 

I  dare  say  it  was  not  well  cared  for,  but  an  inexhaustible 
wealth  of  ears  came  into  the  milk  just  at  the  right  mo 
ment  for  our  enjoyment.  We  had  then  begun  to  build 
our  new  house,  and  for  this  we  were  now  kiln-drying  the 
green  oak  flooring-boards.  We  had  built  a  long  skeleton 
hut,  and  had  set  the  boards  upright  all  around  it  and 
roofed  it  with  them,  and  in  the  middle  of  it  we  had  set 
a  huge  old  cast-iron  stove,  in  which  we  kept  a  roaring 
fire.  The  fire  had  to  be  watched  night  and  day,  and  it 
often  took  all  the  boys  of  the  neighborhood  to  watch  it, 
and  to  turn  the  boards.  It  must  have  been  cruelly  hot 
in  that  kiln;  but  I  remember  nothing  of  that;  I  remem 
ber  only  the  luxury  of  the  green  corn,  spitted  on  the  points 
of  long  sticks  and  roasted  in  the  red-hot  stove;  we  must 
almost  have  roasted  our  own  heads  at  the  same  time.  But 
I  suppose  that  if  the  heat  within  the  kiln  or  without  ever 
became  intolerable,  we  escaped  from  it  and  from  our 
light  summer  clothing,  reduced  to  a  Greek  simplicity,  in 
a  delicious  plunge  in  the  river.  We  had  our  choice  of  the 
shallows,  where  the  long  ripple  was  warmed  through  and 
through  by  the  sun  in  which  it  sparkled,  or  the  swimming- 
hole,  whose  depths  were  almost  as  tepid,  but  were  here 
and  there  interwoven  with  mysterious  cool  under-currents. 

We  believed  that  there  were  snapping-turtles  and  water- 
snakes  in  our  swimming-holes,  though  we  never  saw  any. 
There  were  some  fish  in  the  river,  chiefly  suckers  and  cat 
fish  in  the  spring,  when  the  water  was  high  and  turbid, 
and  in  summer  the  bream  that  we  call  sunfish  in  the  West, 
and  there  was  a  superstition,  never  verified  by  us,  of 
bass.  We  did  not  care  much  for  fishing,  though  of  course 
that  had  its  turn  in  the  pleasures  of  our  rolling  year. 
There  were  crawfish,  both  hard-shell  and  soft,  to  be  had 
at  small  risk,  and  mussels  in  plenty.  Their  shells  fur 
nished  us  the  material  for  many  rings  zealously  begun 

and  never  finished;  we  did  not  see  why  they  did  not  pro- 

56 


YEARS    OF    MY    YOUTH 

duce  pearls;  but  perhaps  they  were  all  eaten  up,  before 
the  pearl  disease  could  attack  them,  by  the  muskrats, 
before  whose  holes  their  shells  were  heaped. 

Of  skating  on  the  river  I  think  we  had  none.  The 
winter  often  passed  in  our  latitude  without  making  ice 
enough  for  that  sport,  and  there  could  not  have  been 
much  sledding,  either.  We  read,  enviously  enough,  in 
Peter  Parley's  First  Book  of  History,  of  the  coasting  on 
Boston  Common,  and  we  made  some  weak-kneed  sleds 
(whose  imbecile  runners  flattened  helplessly  under  them) 
when  the  light  snows  began  to  come;  but  we  never  had 
any  real  coasting,  as  our  elders  never  had  any  real  sleigh 
ing  in  the  jumpers  they  made  by  splitting  a  hickory  sap 
ling  for  runners,  and  mounting  any  sort  of  rude  box  upon 
them.  They  might  have  used  sleighs  in  the  mud,  how 
ever;  that  was  a  foot  deep  on  most  of  the  roads,  and 
lasted  all  winter.  For  a  little  while  some  of  us  went 
two  miles  away  through  the  woods  to  school;  but  there 
was  not  much  to  be  taught  a  reading  family  like  ours  in 
that  log  hut,  and  I  suppose  it  was  not  thought  worth 
while  to  keep  us  at  it.  No  impression  of  it  remains  to 
me,  except  the  wild,  lonesome  cooing  of  the  turtle-doves 
when  they  began  to  nest  in  the  neighboring  oaks. 

Our  new  house  got  on  slowly.  The  log  cabin  had  not 
become  pleasanter  with  the  advance  of  the  summer,  and 
we  looked  forward  to  our  occupation  of  the  new  house 
with  an  eagerness  which  even  in  us  boys  must  have  had 
some  sense  of  present  discomfort  at  the  bottom  of  it. 
The  frame  was  of  oak,  and  my  father  decided  to  have  the 
house  weather-boarded  and  shingled  with  black-walnut, 
which  was  so  much  cheaper  than  pine,  and  which,  left 
in  its  natural  state,  he  thought  would  be  agreeable  in  color. 
It  appeared  to  me  a  palace.  I  spent  all  the  leisure  I 
had  from  swimming  and  Indian-fighting  and  reading  in 

watching  the  carpenter  work,  and  hearing  him  talk;   his 

$7 


YEARS    OF    MY    YOUTH 

talk  was  not  the  wisest,  but  he  thought  very  well  of  it 
himself,  and  I  had  so  far  lapsed  from  civilization  that  I 
stood  in  secret  awe  of  him,  because  he  came  from  town — 
from  the  little  village,  namely,  two  miles  away. 

I  try  to  give  merely  a  child's  memories  of  our  life, 
which  were  nearly  all  delightful;  but  it  must  have  been 
hard  for  my  elders,  and  for  my  mother  especially,  who 
could  get  no  help,  or  only  briefly  and  fitfully,  in  the  work 
that  fell  to  her.  Now  and  then  a  New  Church  minister, 
of  those  who  used  to  visit  us  in  town,  passed  a  Sunday 
with  us  in  the  cabin,  and  that  was  a  rare  time  of  mental 
and  spiritual  refreshment  for  her.  Otherwise,  my  father 
read  us  a  service  out  of  the  Book  of  Worship,  or  a  chapter 
from  the  Heavenly  Arcana;  and  week-day  nights,  while 
the  long  evenings  lasted,  he  read  poetry  to  us — Scott,  or 
Moore,  or  Thomson,  or  some  of  the  more  didactic  poets. 

In  the  summer  evenings,  after  her  long  hard  day's  work 
was  done,  my  mother  sometimes  strolled  out  upon  the 
island  with  my  father,  and  loitered  on  the  bank  to  look 
at  her  boys  in  the  river;  one  such  evening  I  recall,  and 
how  sad  our  gay  voices  were  in  the  dim,  dewy  air.  My 
father  had  built  a  flatboat,  which  we  kept  on  the  smooth 
waters  of  our  dam,  and  on  Sunday  afternoons  the  whole 
family  went  out  in  it.  We  rowed  far  up,  till  we  struck 
a  current  from  the  mill  above  us,  and  then  let  the  boat 
drift  slowly  down  again.  It  does  not  now  seem  very 
exciting,  but  then  to  a  boy  whose  sense  was  open  to 
every  intimation  of  beauty,  the  silence  that  sang  in  our 
ears,  the  stillness  of  the  dam  where  the  low  uplands  and 
the  fringing  sycamores  and  every  rush  and  grass-blade 
by  the  brink  perfectly  glassed  themselves  with  the  vast 
blue  sky  overhead,  were  full  of  mystery,  of  divine  promise, 
and  holy  awe. 

I  recollect  the  complex  effort  of  these  Sunday  after 
noons  as  if  they  were  all  one  sharp  event;  I  recall  in  like 

58 


YEARS    OF    MY    YOUTH 

manner  the  starry  summer  nights,  and  there  is  one  of  these 
nights  that  remains  single  and  peerless  in  my  memory. 
My  brother  and  I  had  been  sent  on  an  errand  to  some 
neighbor's — for  a  bag  of  potatoes  or  a  joint  of  meat;  it 
does  not  matter — and  we  had  been  somehow  belated,  so 
that  it  was  well  after  twilight  when  we  started  home,  and 
the  round  moon  was  high  when  we  stopped  to  rest  in  a 
piece  of  the  lovely  open  woodland  of  that  region,  where 
the  trees  stood  in  a  parklike  freedom  from  underbrush, 
and  the  grass  grew  dense  and  rich  among  them.  We 
took  the  pole,  on  which  we  had  slung  the  bag,  from  our 
shoulders,  and  sat  down  on  an  old  long-fallen  log,  and 
listened  to  the  densely  interwoven  monotonies  of  the  in 
numerable  katydids,  in  which  the  air  seemed  clothed  as 
with  a  mesh  of  sound.  The  shadows  fell  black  from  the 
trees  upon  the  smooth  sward,  but  every  other  place  was 
full  of  the  tender  light  in  which  all  forms  were  rounded  and 
softened;  the  moon  hung  tranced  in  the  sky.  We  scarcely 
spoke  in  the  shining  solitude,  the  solitude  which  for  once 
had  no  terrors  for  the  childish  fancy,  but  was  only  beauti 
ful.  This  perfect  beauty  seemed  not  only  to  liberate  me 
from  the  fear  which  is  the  prevailing  mood  of  childhood, 
but  to  lift  my  soul  nearer  and  nearer  to  the  soul  of  all 
things  in  an  exquisite  sympathy.  Such  moments  never 
pass;  they  are  ineffaceable;  their  rapture  immortalizes; 
from  them  we  know  that,  whatever  perishes,  there  is  some 
thing  in  us  that  cannot  die,  that  divinely  regrets,  divinely 
hopes. 

XI 

Our  log  cabin  stood  only  a  stone's-cast  from  the  gray 
old  weather-tinted  grist-mill,  whose  voice  was  music  for 
us  by  night  and  by  day,  so  that  on  Sundays,  when  the 

water  was  shut  off  from  the  great  tub-wheels  in  its  base- 

59 


YEARS   OF   MY   YOUTH 

ment,  it  was  as  if  the  world  had  gone  deaf  and  dumb.  A 
soft  sibilance  prevailed  by  day  over  the  dull,  hoarse  mur 
mur  of  the  machinery;  but  late  at  night,  when  the  water 
gathered  that  mysterious  force  which  the  darkness  gives 
it,  the  voice  of  the  mill  had  something  weird  in  it  like  a 
human  moan. 

It  was  in  all  ways  a  place  which  I  did  not  care  to  ex 
plore  alone.  It  was  very  well,  with  a  company  of  boys, 
to  tumble  and  wrestle  in  the  vast  bins  full  of  tawny  wheat, 
or  to  climb  the  slippery  stairs  to  the  cooling-floor  in  the 
loft,  whither  the  little  pockets  of  the  elevators  carried 
the  meal  warm  from  the  burrs,  and  the  blades  of  the 
wheel  up  there,  worn  smooth  by  years  of  use,  spread  it 
out  in  an  ever-widening  circle,  and  caressed  it  with  a 
thousand  repetitions  of  their  revolution.  But  the  heavy 
rush  of  the  water  upon  the  wheels  in  the  dim,  humid 
basement,  the  angry  whirr  of  the  millstones  under  the  hop 
pers,  the  high  windows,  powdered  and  darkened  with  the 
floating  meal,  the  vague  corners  festooned  with  flour- 
laden  cobwebs,  the  jolting  and  shaking  of  the  bolting- 
cloths,  had  all  a  potentiality  of  terror  in  them  that  was 
not  a  pleasure  to  the  boy's  sensitive  nerves.  Ghosts, 
against  all  reason  and  experience,  were  but  too  probably 
waiting  their  chance  to  waylay  unwary  steps  there  when 
ever  two  feet  ventured  alone  into  the  mill,  and  Indians, 
of  course,  made  it  their  ambush. 

With  the  sawmill  it  was  another  matter.  That  was 
always  an  affair  of  the  broad  day.  It  began  work  and 
quitted  work  like  a  Christian,  and  did  not  keep  the  grist- 
milPs  unnatural  hours.  Yet  it  had  its  fine  moments, 
when  the  upright  saw  lunged  through  the  heavy  oak  log 
and  gave  out  the  sweet  smell  of  the  bruised  woody  fibers, 
or  then  when  the  circular  saw  wailed  through  the  length 
of  the  lath  we  were  making  for  the  new  house,  and  freed 

itself  with  a  sharp  cry,  and  purred  softly  till  the  wood 

60 


YEARS    OF    MY    YOUTH 

touched  it  again,  and  it  broke  again  into  its  shrill  lament. 
The  warm  sawdust  in  the  pit  below  was  almost  as  friend 
ly  to  bare  feet  as  the  warm  meal;  and  it  was  splendid  to 
rush  down  the  ways  on  the  cars  that  brought  up  the 
logs  or  carried  away  the  lumber. 

It  was  in  the  early  part  of  the  second  winter  that  it 
was  justly  thought  fit  I  should  leave  these  delights  and 

go  to  earn  some  money  in  a  printing-office  in  X , 

when  the  foreman  of  the  printing-office  appeared  one  day 
at  our  cabin  and  asked  if  I  could  come  to  take  the  place 
of  a  delinquent  hand.  There  was  no  question  with  any 
one  but  myself  but  I  must  go.  For  me,  a  terrible  home 
sickness  fell  instantly  upon  me — a  homesickness  that  al 
ready,  in  the  mere  prospect  of  absence,  pierced  my  heart 
and  filled  my  throat. 

The  foreman  wanted  me  to  go  back  with  him  in  his 
buggy,  but  a  day's  grace  was  granted  me,  and  then  my 

elder  brother  took  me  to  X ,  where  he  was  to  meet 

my  father  at  the  railroad  station  on  his  return  from  Cin 
cinnati.  It  had  been  snowing,  in  the  soft  Southern  Ohio 
fashion,  but  the  clouds  had  broken  away,  and  the  evening 
fell  in  a  clear  sky,  apple-green  along  the  horizon  as  we 
drove  on.  This  color  of  the  sky  must  always  be  asso 
ciated  for  me  with  the  despair  which  then  filled  my  soul 
and  which  I  was  constantly  swallowing  down  with  great 
gulps.  We  joked,  and  got  some  miserable  laughter  out 
of  the  efforts  of  the  horse  to  free  himself  from  the  snow 
that  balled  in  his  hoofs,  but  I  suffered  all  the  time  an  an 
guish  of  homesickness  that  now  seems  incredible.  I  had 
every  fact  of  the  cabin  life  before  me;  what  each  of  the 
children  was  doing,  especially  the  younger  ones,  and 
what,  above  all,  my  mother  was  doing,  and  how  she 
was  looking;  and  I  saw  the  wretched  little  phantasm  of 
myself  moving  about  among  them. 

The  editor  to  whom  my  brother  delivered  me  over  couki 

91 


YEARS    OF    MY    YOUTH 

not  conceive  of  me  as  tragedy;  he  received  me  as  if  I 
were  the  merest  commonplace,  and  delivered  me  in  turn 
to  the  good  man  with  whom  I  was  to  board.  There  were 
half  a  dozen  school-girls  boarding  there,  too,  and  their 
gaiety,  when  they  came  in,  added  to  my  desolation.  The 
man  said  supper  was  about  ready,  and  he  reckoned  I 
would  get  something  to  eat  if  I  looked  out  for  myself. 
Upon  reflection  I  answered  that  I  thought  I  did  not  want 
any  supper,  and  that  I  must  go  to  find  my  brother,  whom 
I  had  to  tell  something.  I  found  him  at  the  station  and 
told  him  I  was  going  home  with  him.  He  tried  to  reason 
with  me,  or  rather  with  my  frenzy  of  homesickness;  and 
I  agreed  to  leave  the  question  open  till  my  father  came; 
but  in  my  own  mind  it  was  closed. 

My  father  suggested,  however,  something  that  had  not 
occurred  to  either  of  us:  we  should  both  stay.  This 
seemed  possible  for  me;  but  not  at  that  boarding-house, 
not  within  the  sound  of  the  laughter  of  those  girls!  We 
went  to  the  hotel,  where  we  had  beefsteak  and  ham  and 
eggs  and  hot  biscuit  every  morning  for  breakfast,  and 
where  we  paid  two  dollars  apiece  for  the  week  we  stayed. 
At  the  end  of  this  time  the  editor  had  found  another 
hand,  and  we  went  home,  where  I  was  welcomed  as  from 
a  year's  absence. 

Again  I  was  called  to  suffer  a  like  trial,  the  chief  trial 
of  my  boyhood,  but  it  came  in  a  milder  form,  and  was 
lightened  to  me  not  only  by  the  experience  of  survival 
from  it,  but  by  kindly  circumstance.  This  time  I  went  to 
Dayton,  where  my  young  uncle  somehow  learned  the  mis 
ery  I  was  in,  and  bade  me  come  and  stay  with  him  while 
I  remained  in  the  town.  I  was  very  fond  of  him,  and  of 
the  gentle  creature,  his  wife,  but  for  all  that,  I  was  home 
sick  still.  I  fell  asleep  with  the  radiant  image  of  our  log 
cabin  before  my  eyes,  and  I  woke  with  my  heart  like  lead 
in  my  breast. 


YEARS    OF    MY    YOUTH 

I  did  not  see  how  I  could  get  through  the  day,  and  I 
began  it  with  miserable  tears.  I  had  found  that  by 
drinking  a  great  deal  of  water  at  my  meals  I  could  keep 
down  the  sobs  for  the  time  being,  and  I  practised  this 
device  to  the  surprise  and  alarm  of  my  relatives,  who 
were  troubled  at  the  spectacle  of  my  unnatural  thirst. 
But  I  could  not  wholly  hide  my  suffering,  and  I  suppose 
that  after  a  while  the  sight  of  it  became  intolerable.  At 
any  rate,  a  blessed  evening  came  when  I  returned  from  my 
work  and  found  my  brother  waiting  for  me  at  my  uncle's 
house;  and  the  next  morning  we  set  out  for  home  in  the 
keen,  silent  dark  before  the  November  dawn. 

We  were  both  mounted  on  the  italic-footed  mare,  I 
behind  my  brother,  with  my  arms  round  him  to  keep  on 
better;  and  so  we  rode  out  of  the  sleeping  town,  and  into 
the  lifting  shadow  of  the  woods.  They  might  have 
swarmed  with  ghosts  or  Indians;  I  should  not  have  cared; 
I  was  going  home.  By  and  by,  as  we  rode  on,  the  birds 
began  to  call  one  another  from  their  dreams,  the  quails 
whistled  from  the  stubble  fields,  and  the  crows  clamored 
from  the  decaying  tops  of  the  girdled  trees  in  the  deaden 
ing;  the  squirrels  raced  along  the  fence-rails,  and,  in  the 
woods,  they  stopped  half-way  up  the  boles  to  bark  at  us; 
the  jays  strutted  down  the  shelving  branches  to  offer  us  a 
passing  insult  and  defiance. 

Sometimes,  at  a  little  clearing,  we  came  to  a  log  cabin; 
the  blue  smoke  curled  from  its  chimney,  and  through 
the  closed  door  came  the  low  hum  of  a  spinning-wheel. 
The  red  and  yellow  leaves,  heavy  with  the  cold  dew, 
dripped  round  us;  I  was  profoundly  at  peace,  and  the 
homesick  will  understand  how  it  was  that  I  was  as  if 
saved  from  death.  At  last  we  crossed  the  tail-race  from 
the  island,  and  turned  up,  not  at  the  old  log  cabin,  but 
at  the  front  door  of  the  new  house.  The  family  had  flitted 
during  my  absence,  and  now  they  all  burst  out  upon  me, 

03 


YEARS    OF    MY    YOUTH 

in  exultant  welcome,  and  my  mother  caught  me  to  her 
heart.  Doubtless  she  knew  that  it  would  have  been 
better  for  me  to  have  conquered  myself;  but  my  defeat 
was  dearer  to  her  than  my  triumph  could  have  been. 
She  made  me  her  honored  guest;  I  had  the  best  place  at 
the  table,  the  tenderest  bit  of  steak,  the  richest  cup  of 
her  golden  coffee;  and  all  that  day  I  was  " company." 

It  was  a  great  day,  which  I  must  have  spent  chiefly  in 
admiring  the  new  house.  It  was  so  very  new  yet  as  not 
to  be  plastered;  they  had  not  been  able  to  wait  for  that; 
but  it  was  beautifully  lathed  in  all  its  partitions,  and  the 
closely  fitted  floors  were  a  marvel  of  carpentering.  I 
roamed  through  the  rooms,  and  up  and  down  the  stairs, 
and  freshly  admired  the  familiar  outside  of  the  house  as 
if  it  were  as  novel  as  the  interior,  where  open  wood  fires 
blazed  upon  the  hearths  and  threw  a  pleasant  light  of 
home  upon  the  latticed  walls. 

I  must  have  gone  through  the  old  log  cabin  to  see  how 
it  looked  without  us,  but  I  have  no  recollection  of  ever 
entering  its  door  again,  so  soon  had  it  ceased  to  be  part 
of  my  life.  We  remained  in  the  new  house,  as  we  con 
tinued  to  call  it,  for  two  or  three  months,  and  then  the 
changes  of  business  which  had  been  taking  place  without 
the  knowledge  of  us  children  called  us  away  from  that 
roof,  too,  and  we  left  the  mills  and  the  pleasant  country 
that  had  grown  so  dear,  to  take  up  our  abode  in  city  streets 
again.  We  went  to  live  in  the  ordinary  brick  house  of 
our  civilization,  but  we  had  grown  so  accustomed,  with 
the  quick  and  facile  adaptation  of  children,  to  living  in  a 
house  which  was  merely  lathed,  that  we  distinguished 
this  last  dwelling  from  the  new  house  as  a  "  plastered 
house." 

Some  of  our  playmates  of  the  neighborhood  walked 
part  of  the  way  to  X with  us  boys,  the  snowy  morn 
ing  when  we  turned  our  backs  on  the  new  house  to  take 


YEARS    OF   MY    YOUTH 

the  train  in  that  town.  A  shadow  of  the  gloom  in  which 
our  spirits  were  steeped  passes  over  me  again,  but  chiefly 
I  remember  our  difficulties  in  getting  our  young  New 
foundland  dog  away  with  us;  and  our  subsequent  em 
barrassments  with  him  on  the  train,  where  he  sat  up  and 
barked  out  of  the  window  at  the  passing  objects  and 
finally  became  seasick,  blot  all  other  memories  of  that 
journey  from  my  mind. 


II 


IF  in  a  child's  first  years  the  things  which  it  apparently 
remembers  are  really  the  suggestions  of  its  elders,  it 
begins  soon  to  repay  the  debt,  and  repays  it  more  and 
more  fully  until  its  memory  touches  the  history  of  all 
whom  it  has  known.  Through  the  whole  time  when  a 
boy  is  becoming  a  man  his  autobiography  can  scarcely 
be  kept  from  becoming  the  record  of  his  family  and  his 
world.  He  finds  himself  so  constantly  reflected  in  the 
personality  of  those  about  him,  so  blent  with  it,  that 
any  attempt  to  study  himself  as  a  separate  personality  is 
impossible.  His  environment  has  become  his  life,  and  his 
hope  of  a  recognizable  self-portrait  must  lie  in  his  frank 
acceptance  of  the  condition  that  he  can  make  himself 
truly  seen  chiefly  in  what  he  remembers  to  have  seen  of 
his  environment. 


We  were  now  going  from  the  country  to  Columbus, 
where  my  father,  after  several  vain  attempts  to  find  an 
opening  elsewhere  as  editor  or  even  as  practical  printer, 
had  found  congenial  occupation  at  least  for  the  winter; 
and  the  reader  who  likes  to  date  a  small  event  by  a  great 
one  may  care  to  know  that  we  arrived  in  the  capital  of 
Ohio  about  the  time  that  Louis  Kossuth  arrived  in  the 
capital  of  the  United  States.  In  the  most  impressive 
exile  ever  known  he  came  from  Hungary,  then  trampled 
under  foot  by  the  armies  of  Austria  and  Russia,  and  had 

66 


YEARS    OF    MY    YOUTH 

been  greeted  with  a  frenzy  of  enthusiasm  in  New  York 
as  the  prophet  and  envoy  of  a  free  republic  in  present 
difficulties,  but  destined  to  a  glorious  future.  At  Wash 
ington  he  had  been  received  by  both  Houses  of  Congress 
with  national  honors  which  might  well  have  seemed  to  him 
national  promises  of  help  against  the  despotisms  joined 
in  crushing  the  Magyar  revolt;  we  had  just  passed  a  law 
providing  for  the  arrest  of  slaves  escaping  from  their 
owners  in  the  South,  and  we  were  feeling  free  to  encour 
age  the  cause  of  liberty  throughout  the  world. 

Kossuth  easily  deceived  himself  in  us,  and  he  went 
hopefully  about  the  country,  trying  to  float  an  issue  of 
Hungarian  bonds  on  our  sympathetic  tears,  and  in  his 
wonderful  English  making  appeals  full  of  tact  and  elo 
quence,  which  went  to  the  hearts  if  not  the  pockets  of  his 
hearers.  Among  the  other  state  capitals  he  duly  came  to 
Columbus,  where  I  heard  him  from  the  steps  of  the  un 
finished  State  House.  I  hung  on  the  words  of  the  pic 
turesque  black-bearded,  black-haired,  black-eyed  man,  in 
the  braided  coat  of  the  Magyars,  and  the  hat  with  an 
ostrich  plume  up  the  side  which  set  a  fashion  among  us, 
and  I  believed  with  all  my  soul  that  in  a  certain  event 
we  might  find  the  despotisms  of  the  Old  World  banded 
against  us,  and  "would  yet  see  Cossacks,"  as  I  thrilled 
to  hear  Kossuth  say.  In  those  days  we  world-patriots 
put  the  traitor  Gorgy,  who  surrendered  the  Hungarian 
army  to  the  Austrians  and  Russians,  beside  our  own  Bene 
dict  Arnold;  but  what  afterward  became  of  him  I  do 
not  know.  I  know  that  Kossuth  went  disappointed  back 
to  Europe  and  dwelt  a  more  and  more  peaceful  news 
paper  correspondent  in  Turin  till  the  turn  of  fortune's 
wheel  would  have  dropped  him,  somehow  politically  tol 
erable  to  Austria,  back  in  his  native  country.  But  he 
would  not  return;  he  died  in  Turin;  and  a  few  years 

ago  in  Carlsbad  I  fancied  I  had  caught  sight  of  his  son 

67 


YEARS    OF    MY    YOUTH 

at  a  cafe*,  but  was  told  that  I  had  seen  the  wrong  man, 
who  was  much  more  revolutionary-looking  than  Kos- 
suth's  son,  and  more  like  Kossuth. 

I  adopted  with  his  cause  the  Kossuth  hat,  as  we  called 
it,  and  wore  it  with  the  plume  in  it  till  the  opinions  of 
boys  without  plumes  in  their  hats  caused  me  to  take  the 
feather  out.  My  father  was  of  their  mind  about  the 
feather,  but  otherwise  we  thought  a  great  deal  alike,  and 
he  was  zealous  to  have  me  see  the  wonders  of  the  capital. 
I  visited  the  penitentiary  and  the  lunatic,  deaf  and  dumb, 
and  blind  asylums  with  him,  though  I  think  rather  from 
his  interest  than  mine;  but  I  was  willing  enough  to  realize 
the  consequence  of  Columbus  as  the  capital  of  a  sover 
eign  American  state,  and  I  did  what  I  could  to  meet  his 
expectations.  Together  we  made  as  thorough  examina 
tion  of  the  new  State  House  as  the  workmen  who  had  not 
yet  finished  it  would  allow,  and  he  told  me  that  it  would 
cost,  when  done,  a  million  dollars,  a  sum  of  such  im 
mensity  that  my  young  imagination  shrank  from  grap 
pling  with  it ;  but  I  am  afraid  that  before  the  State  House 
was  done  it  may  have  cost  more;  certainly  it  must  have 
cost  much  more  with  the  incongruous  enlargements 
which  in  later  years  spoiled  its  classic  proportions.  My 
father  made  me  observe  that  it  was  built  of  Ohio  limestone 
without,  and  later  I  saw  that  it  was  faced  with  Vermont 
and  Tennessee  marble  within,  where  it  was  not  stuccoed 
and  frescoed;  but  as  for  the  halls  of  legislation  where 
the  laws  of  Ohio  were  made  and  provided,  when  I  first 
witnessed  the  process,  they  were  contained  in  a  modest 
square  edifice  of  brick  which  could  not  have  cost  a  million 
dollars,  or  the  twentieth  part  of  them,  by  the  boldest 
computation  of  the  contractors.  It  was  entirely  modest 
as  to  the  Hall  of  the  House  and  the  Senate  Chamber, 
and  I  suppose  that  so  were  the  state  offices,  wherever  they 
were,  unnoted  by  me.  The  State  House,  as  much  as  I 


YEARS    OF   MY    YOUTH 

knew  of  it  from  a  single  visit  to  the  Hall  of  Representatives, 
was  of  a  very  simple  interior  heated  from  two  vast  hearths 
where  fires  of  cord- wood  logs  were  blazing  high.  There 
were  rows  of  legislators  sitting  at  their  desks,  and  prob 
ably  one  of  them  was  on  his  feet,  speaking;  I  recall  dimly 
a  presiding  officer,  but  my  main  affair  was  to  breathe  as 
softly  as  I  could  and  get  away  as  soon  as  possible  from 
my  father's  side  where  he  sat  reporting  the  proceedings 
for  the  Ohio  State  Journal,  then  the  Whig  and  later  the 
Republican  organ. 


ii 

Nobody  cares  now  for  the  details,  or  even  the  main 
incidents  of  state  legislation,  but  in  that  day  people 
seemed  to  care  so  much  that  the  newspapers  at  the 
capital  found  their  account  in  following  them,  and  as  I 
learned  later  the  papers  at  Cincinnati  and  Cleveland  had 
correspondents  at  Columbus  to  let  them  know  by  letter 
what  went  on  in  the  House  and  Senate.  My  father 
could  make  a  very  full  and  faithful  report  of  the  legislative 
proceedings  in  longhand,  and  for  this  he  was  paid  ten 
dollars  a  week.  As  I  have  told  elsewhere,  I  worked  on 
the  same  paper  and  had  four  dollars  as  compositor;  my 
eldest  brother  became  very  provisionally  clerk  in  a 
grocery-store  where  he  had  three  dollars,  and  read  the 
novels  of  Captain  Maryatt  in  the  intervals  of  custom. 
Our  joint  income  enabled  us  to  live  comfortably  in  the 
little  brick  house,  on  a  humble  new  street,  which  my 
father  hired  for  ten  dollars  a  month  from  a  Welsh  carpen 
ter  with  a  large  family.  No  sense  of  our  own  Welsh 
origin  could  render  this  family  interesting;  I  memorized 
some  scraps  of  their  Cymric  as  I  overheard  it  across  the 
fence,  but  we  American  children  did  not  make  acquaint 
ance  with  the  small  Welsh  folk,  or  with  more  than  these 

69 


YEARS    OF   MY    YOUTH 

few  words  of  their  language,  which  after  several  attempts 
at  its  grammar  still  remain  my  sole  knowledge  of  it. 
On  the  other  side  lived  a  mild,  dull  German  of  some 
lowly  employ,  whom  I  remember  for  his  asking  us  across 
the  fence,  one  day,  to  lend  him  a  leather  cover.  When 
by  his  patient  repetition  this  construed  itself  as  an  en 
velope,  we  loved  him  for  the  pleasure  it  gave  us,  and 
at  once  made  leather-cover  the  family  name  for  enve 
lope.  Across  the  street  dwelt  an  English  family  of  such 
amiable  intelligence  that  they  admired  some  verses  of 
mine  which  my  father  stole  to  their  notice  and  which 
they  put  me  to  shame  by  praising  before  my  face. 

In  my  leisure  from  the  printing-office  I  was  in  fact  cul 
tivating  a  sufficiently  thankless  muse  in  the  imitation  of 
Pope  and  Goldsmith,  for  in  me,  more  than  his  other 
children,  my  father  had  divined  and  encouraged  the  love 
of  poetry;  but  in  reproducing  his  poets,  as  I  constantly 
did,  to  his  greater  admiration  than  mine,  I  sometimes 
had  a  difficulty  which  I  did  not  carry  to  him.  There  is 
no  harm  in  now  submitting  it  to  the  reader,  who  may 
have  noted  in  his  own  case  the  serious  disadvantage  of 
writing  about  love  when  he  had  as  yet  had  no  experience 
of  the  passion.  I  did  my  best,  and  I  suppose  I  did  no 
worse  than  other  poets  of  thirteen.  But  I  fell  back  most 
ly  upon  inanimate  nature,  which  I  knew  very  well  from 
the  woods  where  I  had  hunted  and  the  fields  where  I  had 
hoed;  to  be  honest,  I  never  hoed  so  much  as  I  hunted, 
and  I  never  hunted  very  successfully.  I  now  went  many 
walks  into  the  woods  and  fields  about  the  town  in  my  long 
ing  for  the  wider  spaces  I  had  known,  and  helped  my 
sisters  dig  up  the  wild  flowers  which  they  brought  home 
and  planted  in  our  yard.  But  I  recall  more  distinctly 
than  any  other  a  Sunday  walk  which  I  took  with  my 
father  across  the  Scioto  to  the  forsaken  town  on  the 

western  bank  of  the  river.     Franklinton  had  been  thought 

70 


YEARS    OF    MY    YOUTH 

of  as  the  capital  before  Columbus,  and  it  has  now  been 
rehabilitated  in  an  indefinitely  greater  prosperity  than  it 
ever  enjoyed  in  its  prime,  but  during  my  life  in  the  city 
which  so  promptly  won  the  capital  away  from  it,  Franklin- 
ton  lay  abandoned  by  nine-tenths  of  its  inhabitants,  and 
stretched  over  the  plain  in  rows  of  small,  empty  brick 
dwellings.  I  have  the  impression  of  disused  county  build 
ings,  but  I  am  not  sure  of  them ;  I  heard  (but  in  days  when 
I  did  not  much  concern  myself  with  such  poor  unliterary 
facts)  that  the  notion  of  Franklinton  as  the  capital  was 
rejected  because  it  was  apt  in  springtime  to  be  flooded  by 
the  Scioto,  and  was  at  other  seasons  infested  by  malaria 
which  the  swarms  of  mosquitoes  bore  to  every  household. 
The  people,  mostly  sallow  women  and  children  who  still 
gaze  at  me  from  a  few  of  the  doorways  and  windows, 
looked  as  if  their  agues  were  of  unfailing  recurrence  every 
other  day  of  every  week;  though  I  suppose  that  in  winter 
they  were  somewhat  less  punctual.  I  should  like  to 
believe  that  Franklinton  was  precious  to  me  because  of 
its  suggestion  of  Goldsmith's  Deserted  Village,  but  I 
cannot  claim  that  it  bore  any  likeness  to  the  hamlet  of 
the  poet's  fancy,  even  in  the  day  when  I  was  hungering 
to  resemble  all  life  to  literature;  and  I  never  made  it  the 
subject  of  my  verse,  though  I  think  now  it  merited  as 
much  and  more.  Since  that  time  I  have  seen  other 
abandoned  cities,  notably  Pompeii  and  Herculaneum, 
but  Franklinton  remains  of  a  memorable  pathos  and  of  a 
forlornness  all  the  more  appreciable  because  it  had  become 
ruin  and  eld  amidst  the  young,  vigorous  life  of  a  new 
country. 

In  My  Literary  Passions  I  have  made  full  mention  of  the 
books  I  was  reading  that  winter  of  1851-2;  but  I  was 
rather  surprised  to  find  that  in  a  boyish  diary  of  the  time, 
lately  discovered  in  the  chaos  of  a  storage  warehouse,  none 
of  my  favorite  authors  was  specified.  I  could  trace  them, 

71 


YEARS    OF    MY    YOUTH 

indeed,  in  the  varying  style  of  the  record,  but  the  diarist 
seems  to  have  been  shy  of  naming  them,  for  no  reason  that 
I  can  now  imagine. 

The  diary  is  much  more  palpable  than  the  emotions  of 
the  diarist,  and  is  a  large,  flat  volume  of  foolscap  paper, 
bound  in  marbled  boards,  somewhat  worn  with  use  and 
stained  with  age.  The  paper  within  is  ruled,  which  kept 
the  diarist's  hand  from  wandering,  and  the  record  fills 
somewhat  less  than  a  fourth  of  the  pages;  the  rest  are 
given  to  grammatical  exercises  in  Spanish,  which  the 
diarist  was  presently  beginning  to  study,  but  even  these 
interrupt  themselves,  falter,  and  are  finally  lost  in  space. 
The  volume  looks  quite  its  age  of  sixty  years,  for  it  begins 
in  the  closing  months  of  1851. 

The  diarist  practised  a  different  handwriting  every  day 
and  wrote  a  style  almost  as  varied.  The  script  must  have 
been  imitated  from  the  handwritings  which  he  successively 
admired,  and  the  literary  manner  from  that  which  seemed 
to  him  most  elegant  in  the  authors  he  had  latest  read. 
He  copies  not  only  their  style,  but  their  mental  poses,  and 
is  often  sage  beyond  his  years,  which  are  fourteen  verging 
upon  fifteen.  With  all  its  variety  of  script,  the  spelling  in 
the  diary  is  uniformly  of  the  correct  sort  which  printers 
used  to  learn  as  part  of  their  trade,  but  which  is  said  to 
be  now  suffering  a  general  decay  through  the  use  of  type 
setting  machines.  There  are  few  grammatical  errors  in 
the  diversified  pages  and  the  punctuation  is  accurate  and 
intelligent. 

Though  there  is  little  note  or  none  of  the  diarist's 
reading,  there  is  other  witness  that  it  had  already  begun 
to  be  of  wide  range  and  copious  variety.  Now  and  then 
there  are  hints  of  his  familiarity  with  Goldsmith's  Essays, 
and  Dickens's  novels  which  his  father  was  reading  aloud, 
and  one  Sunday  it  appears  that  when  he  was  so  loath  to 

get  up  that  he  did  not  rise  until  eight  o'clock  he  tells 

72 


YEARS    OF    MY    YOUTH 

us:  "I  slipped  into  my  clothes,  made  the  fire  in  the  sitting- 
room,  wrapped  father's  cloak  about  me,  and  sat  down  to 
read  the  travels  of  Hommaire  de  Hell,  a  Frenchman  who 
traveled  in  the  Russian  Empire  in  the  year  1840."  I 
do  not  care  much  now  who  M.  Hommaire  de  Hell  was  or 
what  he  had  to  say  of  the  Russian  Empire  in  1840,  but 
I  wish  I  could  see  that  boy  wrapped  in  his  father's  cloak, 
and  losing  himself  in  the  Frenchman's  page.  Though  I 
have  the  feeling  that  we  were  once  familiarly  acquainted, 
I  am  afraid  the  diarist  would  not  know  me  if  he  looked 
up  across  the  space  of  threescore  years,  though  he  might 
divine  in  me  a  kindred  sense  of  the  heaviness  of  the  long 
Sunday  hours  which  he  confronts  when  he  rises  from  his 
reading. 

Throughout  the  yellowing  pages  there  is  evident  striv 
ing,  not  to  say  straining,  for  a  literary  style,  the  most 
literary  style  possible,  and  the  very  first  page  commemo 
rates  a  visit  to  the  Lunatic  Asylum  in  terms  of  a  noble 
participial  construction.  "  Passing  up  the  broad  graveled 
path  to  the  door  of  the  institution,  we  entered  the  office, 
and  leaving  our  hats  on  the  table  we  proceeded  on  our 
way.  The  first  room  we  entered  contained  those  who 
were  nearly  cured.  There  was  in  it  no  one  but  an  old 
and  a  young  man.  The  old  man  I  did  not  notice  much, 
but  the  young  one  attracted  my  attention.  He  paced  the 
floor  all  the  time,  not  taking  the  least  notice  of  us;  then 
we  went  up-stairs  where  the  most  unmanageable  ones 
were  kept.  Here  was  a  motley  crew,  some  of  them  lying 
at  full  length  on  the  floor,  standing  up  and  walking  about, 
while  crownless  hats  and  dilapidated  shirt-bosoms  were 
the  order  of  the  day.  In  the  midst  of  these  terrible  men, 
thoughtless  as  the  brute  and  ferocious  as  the  tiger,  stood 
a  small  man  (the  assistant  physician)  whom  they  could 
have  torn  limb  from  limb  in  a  moment.  Here  was  a 
beautiful  instance  of  the  power  of  mind  over  brute  force. 

73 


YEARS    OF    MY    YOUTH 

He  was  reading  poetry  to  them,  and  the  men,  totally  bereft 
of  reason,  listening  like  little  children  to  the  sweet  cadence 
of  the  verse."  All  this  and  more  is  in  a  fine  script,  so 
sloping  that  it  is  almost  lying  down,  either  from  the  ex 
hausting  emotions  of  the  diarist  or  from  a  temporary 
ideal  of  elegance.  But  the  very  next  day  it  braces  itself 
for  a  new  effort  and  it  is  not  many  days  before  it  stands 
upright  in  a  bold,  vertical  file. 

The  writer  does  not  know  any  boys  except  in  the  print 
ing-office,  and  these  he  knows  only  in  a  shrinking  sort, 
not  venturing  to  take  part,  except  once,  in  their  wild 
hilarity,  and  scarcely  knowing  their  names,  even  the  name 
of  the  boy  whom  he  is  aftenvard  to  associate  himself 
with  in  their  first  venture  with  a  volume  of  verse. 
His  chief  companionship  is  with  his  father,  whom  he  goes 
long  walks  and  holds  long  talks  with,  and  it  is  his  father  who 
encourages  him  in  his  versifying  and  who  presently  steals 
into  the  print  of  the  newspaper  employing  them  both  a 
poem  on  the  premature  warm  weather  which  has  invited 
the  bluebirds  and  blackbirds  into  the  northern  March. 
At  first  the  boy  was  in  dismay  at  the  sight  of  the  poem, 
with  the  introductory  editorial  note  customary  in  those 
days,  but  he  hides  this  from  his  diary,  where  he  confides 
his  joy  in  finding  his  verses  "copied  into  a  New  York 
paper,  and  also  in  the  Cincinnati  Commercial.  I  mean 
the  piece  on  Winter." 

But  the  poet  kept  on  and  wrote  more  and  more,  while 
the  diarist  wrote  less  and  less.  It  is  needless  to  follow  him 
through  the  pieces  which  were  mostly  imitated  from  some 
favorite  poet  of  the  moment  or  more  originally  drawn  from 
the  scenes  of  life  known  to  the  author.  One  of  these, 
painting  an  emigrant's  farewell  to  the  home  he  is  leaving, 
tells  how  he  stoops  over — 

"And  pats  the  good  old  house  dog 

is  lying  on  the  floor," 

74 


YEARS    OF    MY    YOUTH 

The  morning  after  the  piece  appeared,  a  fellow  printer- 
boy  seems  to  have  quoted  the  line  aloud  for  all  to  hear, 
and  dramatized  it  by  patting  the  author  on  the  head, 
inwardly  raging  but  helpless  to  resent  the  liberty.  In 
fact,  the  poet  did  not  well  know  how  to  manage  the  pub 
licity  now  thrust  upon  him.  He  behaved  indeed  with 
such  outrageous  resentment  at  finding  his  first  piece  of 
verse  in  print  that  his  father,  who  had  smuggled  it  into 
the  editor's  hands,  well-nigh  renounced  him  and  all  his 
works.  But  not  quite;  he  was  too  fond  of  both,  and  the 
boy  and  he  were  presently  abetting  each  other  in  the 
endeavor  for  his  poetic  repute — so  soon  does  the  love  of 
fame  go  to  the  strongest  head. 

As  yet  neither  looked  for  his  recognition  in  that  sort  of 
literature  which  the  boy  was  ultimately  to  be  best  or  most 
known  in.  He  seems  not  to  have  read  at  this  time  much 
prose  fiction,  but  he  was  reading  Homer  in  Pope's  transla 
tion,  or  rather  he  was  reading  the  Odyssey;  the  Iliad  he 
found  tiresome  and  noisy ;  and  if  the  whole  truth  must  be 
told,  as  I  have  understood  it,  he  liked  The  Battle  of  the 
Frogs  and  Mice  best  of  all  the  Homeric  poems.  It  was 
this  which  he  imitated  in  a  burlesque  epic  of  The  Cat 
Fight,  studied  from  nature  in  the  hostilities  nightly  raging 
on  the  back  fences;  but  the  only  surviving  poem  of  what 
may  be  called  his  classical  period,  as  the  poets  of  it  under 
stood  Queen  Anne's  age,  is  a  pastoral  so  exactly  modeled 
upon  the  pastorals  of  the  great  Mr.  Pope,  that  but  for  a 
faulty  line  here  and  there  and  the  intrusion  of  a  few  live 
American  birds  among  the  stuffed  songsters  of  those 
Augustan  groves,  I  do  not  see  how  Mr.  Pope  could  deny 
having  written  it.  He  might  well  have  rejoiced  in  a 
follower  who  loved  him  so  devotedly  and  so  exactly  re 
produced  his  artificiality  in  heroic  couplets  studied  from 
his  own,  with  the  same  empty  motive  to  the  same  unreal 
effect,  as  the  surviving  fragments  of  it  will  witness. 

75 


YEARS    OF    MY    YOUTH 

"When  fair  Aurora  kissed  the  purple  East 
And  dusky  night  the  struggling  day  released, 
Two  swains  whom  Phoebus  waked  from  sleep's  embrace 
Led  forth  their  flocks  to  crop  the  dewy  grass. 
While  morning  blushed  upon  the  cheek  of  day 
Young  Corydon  began  the  rural  lay. 

Corydon. 

"Now  ceases  Philomel  her  nightly  strain, 
And  trembling  stars  forsake  the  ethereal  plain; 
Pale  Luna  fades  and  down  the  distant  West 
Sadly  and  slowly  lowers  her  rayless  crest; 
But  yellow  Phoebus  pours  his  beams  along 
And  linnets  sport  where  Philomela  sung. 
Here  robins  chirp  and  joyful  orioles  sing 
Where  late  the  owlet  flapped  his  noiseless  wing; 
Here  the  pale  lily  spreads  its  petals  wide, 
And  snowy  daisies  deck  the  green  hillside; 
Here  violets'  bloom  with  waterflowers  wreath, 
And  forest  blossoms  scent  the  Zephyr's  breath. 
Fit  spot  for  song  where  Spring  in  every  flower 
Rich  incense  offers  to  the  morning  hour. 
Then  let  us  sing!    The  hour  is  meet  for  love, 
The  plain,  the  vale,  the  music-breathing  grove; 
Let  gentle  Daphnis  judge  the  doubtful  song, 
And  soft  J^olus  bear  the  notes  along. 
I  stake  my  pipe  with  whose  soft  notes  I  while 
The  tedious  hours,  and  my  toil  beguile; 
Whose  mellow  voice  gives  joy  serener  charms, 
And  grief  of  half  its  bitterness  disarms." 

Here  should   enter   some   unnamed   competitor,   but 
apparently  does  not. 

"And  I,  my  dog,  who  guards  by  yonder  brook 
Two  careless  truants  from  his  master's  flock; 
Who  views  his  timid  charge  with  jealous  eyes 
And  every  danger  for  their  sake  defies. 
In  cheerful  day  my  helpmate  and  my  pride, 
At  night  my  brave  companion  and  my  guide. 
76 


YEARS    OF    MY    YOUTH 

The  morning  flies:  no  more  the  song  delay, 
For  morning  most  delights  the  Sylvan  Muse, 

Ere  modest  twilight  yields  to  flaming  day, 
And  fervid  sunbeams  drink  the  cooling  dews 

And  wither  half  the  freshness  of  the  Spring." 

Another  nameless  person,  possibly  the  "gentle  Daph- 
nis,"  now  speaks: 

"Alternate,  then,  ye  swains  must  answering  sing. 
By  turns  the  planets  circle  round  the  sun 
In  even  turns  the  changing  seasons  run; 
Smooth-coming  night  enshrouds  the  passing  day, 
And  morn  returning  smiles  the  night  away." 

And  doubtless  now  it  is  Cory  don  who  resumes: 
"Inspire  my  song,  ye  tuneful  nine,  inspire! 
And  fill  the  shepherd's  humble  lay  with  fire. 
Around  your  altar  verdant  bays  I  twine, 
And  palms  I  offer  on  your  sacred  shrine. 
Since  Julia  smiles,  let  Julia  fire  my  strain, 

And  smooth  the  language  of  the  lay  of  love 

Till  conscious  music  breathes  o'er  all  the  plain, 

And  joyous  echoes  wake  the  silent  grove." 

I  have  no  facts  to  support  my  conjecture,  but  I  will 
hazard  the  belief  that  the  winter  of  1851-2  was  largely 
given  to  producing  and  polishing  this  plaster-of-paris 
masterpiece.  I  might  find  it  easy  to  make  a  mock  of  the 
lifeless  cast — a  "cold  pastoral,"  indeed! — but  it  would  be 
with  a  faint,  or  perhaps  more  than  faint,  heartache  for 
the  boy  who  strove  so  fervently  to  realize  a  false  ideal  of 
beauty  in  his  work.  It  is  my  consolation  that  his  soul 
was  always  in  his  work  and  that  when  he  turned  to  other 
ideals  and  truer,  because  faithfuler  to  the  life  he  knew,  he 
put  his  soul  into  them,  too. 

in 

In  the  State  Journal  office  I  had  soon  been  changed  from 
the  newspaper  to  the  book  room,  and  was  put  to  setting  up 

77 


YEARS    OF    MY    YOUTH 

the  House  bills  and  Senate  bills.  1  am  not  ready  to  say 
that  these  potential  laws,  with  their  clattering  repetitions 
of,  "An  Act  entitled  an  Act  to  amend  an  Act,"  intensified 
my  sense  of  Columbus  as  a  capital,  with  the  lawmaking 
machinery  always  grinding  away  in  it;  but  the  formula 
had  its  fascination,  and  I  remained  contented  with  my 
work,  with  no  apprehension,  from  the  frequent  half- 
holidays  offered  me  by  the  foreman,  that  there  was  ever 
to  be  an  end  of  it.  All  at  once,  however,  the  legislature 
had  adjourned  and  my  father's  engagement  ended  with  the 
session.  My  employment  somehow  ceased  with  both, 
and  though  we  children  were  now  no  longer  so  home 
sick  for  the  country,  and  would  have  liked  well  enough  to 
live  on  in  Columbus,  we  were  eager  for  the  new  home 
which  he  told  us  he  had  found  for  us  in  the  Western  Re 
serve.  In  his  anti-slavery  opinions  he  agreed  better  with 
the  Ohio  New-Englanders  there  than  with  the  Ohio 
Virginians  and  Kentuckians  whom  we  had  hitherto  lived 
amongst;  we  understood  that  he  had  got  a  share  in  the 
Freesoil  newspaper  in  Ashtabula;  and  I  can  recall  no 
wider  interval  between  the  adjournment  of  the  legislature 
and  our  taking  passage  on  the  newly  completed  railroad 
to  Cleveland  than  sufficed  me  for  a  hardy  experiment 
in  gardening  among  the  obdurate  clods  and  brickbats  of 
our  small  back  yard. 

In  the  news-room  of  the  State  Journal  office  I  had  seen 
the  first  real  poet  of  my  personal  knowledge  in  the  figure 
of  the  young  assistant  editor  who  used  to  come  in  with 
proofs  or  copy  for  the  foreman,  but  I  cannot  hope  that  the 
reader  will  recognize  him  in  his  true  quality  under  the 
name  of  Florus  B.  Plympton,  or  will  quite  withhold  the 
sophisticated  smile  of  these  days  for  the  simple-hearted 
American  parents  of  the  past  who  could  so  christen  an 
unconsenting  infant.  I  dare  say  most  of  his  verse  was  no 
worthier  of  his  best  than  this  name,  but  if  here  and  there 

78 


YEARS    OF    MY    YOUTH 

a  reader  has  known  the  lovely  lines  of  the  poem  called 
In  Summer  when  the  Days  were  Long,  he  will  be  glad  to 
have  me  recall  it  with  him,  and  do  what  I  can  to  bring 
it  back  from  dumb  forgetfulness.  I  myself  had  not  read 
that  poem  when  I  used  to  see  the  young  editor  in  the 
news-room,  and  he  had  perhaps  not  yet  written  it;  I  be 
lieve  I  did  not  think  any  great  things  of  other  pieces  which 
he  printed  in  the  State  Journal;  and  it  was  in  the  book- 
room,  where  I  was  afterward  transferred,  that  I  all  un 
wittingly  met  the  truest  poet  of  our  Middle  West,  and  one 
of  the  truest  poets  of  any  time  or  place.  With  the  name 
of  John  J.  Piatt  I  would  gladly  relate  my  own  more 
memorably  than  in  the  Poems  of  Two  Friends,  long  since 
promptly  forgotten,  where  I  joined  him  in  our  first  literary 
venture.  We  are  now  old  men,  hard  upon  our  eighties, 
but  we  were  then  boys  of  thirteen  or  fourteen,  with  no 
dream  of  our  adventure  in  joint-authorship,  and  we  had 
our  boyish  escapades  in  the  long  leisure  of  the  spring 
afternoons  of  1850,  when  we  did  not  yet  know  each  other 
even  by  the  nature  of  poets  which  we  shared. 

I  can  see  Piatt  now,  his  blue  eyes  laughing  to  tears  in 
our  romps  and  scuffles,  and  I  can  hear  the  trickling  mirth  of 
his  reluctant  chuckle,  distinct  across  the  days  of  the  years 
that  have  brought  us  so  far.  He  was  setting  up  House 
Bills  and  Senate  Bills  too,  with  whatever  subjective  effect, 
in  the  intervals  of  our  frolic,  but  his  head  must  have  been 
involved  in  the  sunny  mists  that  wrapt  mine  round. 
My  life,  then,  as  always,  was  full  of  literature  to  bursting, 
the  literature  I  read  and  the  literature  I  wrote,  for  my 
father  had  already  printed  some  of  the  verses  I  could  not 
keep  to  myself;  and  it  is  not  strange  that  I  can  recover 
from  the  time  so  few  and  so  trivial  events  of  more  exoteric 
interest.  My  love  indeed  was  primarily  for  my  work  at 
the  printer's  case,  but  that  had  its  hours,  as  while  I  was 
distributing  the  type,  when  my  fancy  roamed  the  universe 

79 


YEARS    OF    MY    YOUTH 

in  every  dramatization  of  a  proud  and  triumphant  future. 
In  these  reveries  I  was  a  man  brilliantly  accepted  by  the 
great  world,  but  in  my  waking  from  them  I  was  a  boy, 
with  a  boy's  fears  and  anxieties  in  conditions  which  might 
not  have  appalled  a  bolder  nature.  There  was,  for  in 
stance,  the  Medical  College  in  State  Street,  where  years 
later  I  was  to  dwell  so  joyously  when  it  had  become  a 
boarding-house  in  a  suspense  of  its  scientific  function, 
but  whence  now,  after  the  early  dark  had  fallen,  ghosts 
swarmed  from  the  dissecting-room,  and  pursued  me  on 
my  way  home  well  round  the  corner  into  Oak  Street, 
where  they  delivered  me  over  to  another  peril,  unfailingly 
in  wait  for  me.  There  an  abominable  cur,  which  had  in 
stinctively  known  of  my  approach  several  houses  away, 
rushed  from  his  gate  to  meet  me.  It  might  have  been 
my  wisest  course  to  run  from  the  ghosts,  but  flight  would 
not  avail  me  with  this  little  beast,  and  when  he  sprang  out 
with  sudden  yelpings  and  barkings,  and  meteoric  flash 
ings  about  my  legs,  I  was  driven  to  the  folly  of  trying 
to  beat  him  off  with  sticks  and  stones.  After  he  had 
once  found  his  way  to  my  terror,  which  remained  to  me 
from  having  been  bitten  by  a  dog  years  before,  and  left 
me  without  a  formula  of  right  behavior  with  a  dog  at 
tacking  me,  nothing  could  save  me  from  him  but  my 
final  escape  from  his  fence,  his  street,  his  city;  and  this, 
more  than  anything  else,  consoled  me  for  any  sense  of 
loss  which  I  may  have  felt  in  leaving  the  state  capital. 


IV 

My  elder  brother  and  I  had  several  ideals  in  common 
quite  apart  from  my  own  literary  ideals.  One  of  these 
was  life  in  a  village,  as  differenced  from  life  in  the  country, 
or  in  any  city,  large  or  little;  another  was  the  lasting 

renunciation    of    the    printing-business    in    every    form. 

80 


YEARS    OF    MY    YOUTH 

The  last  was  an  effect  from  the  anxiety  which  we  had 
shared  with  our  father  and  mother  in  the  long  adversity, 
ending  in  the  failure  of  his  newspaper,  from  which  we 
had  escaped  to  the  country.  Once  clear  of  that  disaster, 
we  meant  never  to  see  a  press  or  a  case  of  types  again; 
and  after  our  year  of  release  from  them  in  the  country  my 
brother  had  his  hopes  of  learning  the  river  and  becoming 
a  steamboat  pilot,  but  failed  in  these,  and  so  joined  us 
in  Columbus,  where  he  had  put  off  the  evil  day  of  his 
return  to  the  printing-business  a  little  longer.  Mean 
while  I  had  yielded  to  my  fate  and  spent  the  whole  winter 
in  a  printing-office;  and  now  we  were  both  going  to  take 
up  our  trade,  so  abhorrent  in  its  memories,  but  going 
gladly  because  of  the  chances  which  it  held  out  to 
my  father  at  a  time  when  there  seemed  no  other  chance 
in  the  world  for  him. 

Yet  we  were  about  to  fulfil  our  other  ideal  by  going  to 
live  in  a  village.  The  paper  which  we  were  to  help  make 
my  father  make  his  by  our  work — for  he  had  no  money 
to  buy  it — was  published  in  Ashtabula,  now  a  rather 
obstreperous  little  city,  full  of  industrial  noise  and  grime, 
with  a  harbor  emulous  of  the  gigantic  activities  of  the 
Cleveland  lake-front,  but  it  must  even  then  have  had 
a  thousand  people.  Our  ideal,  therefore,  was  not  per 
fectly  realized  till  our  office  was  transferred  some  ten  miles 
inland  to  the  county-seat,  for  whatever  business  and 
political  reasons  of  the  joint  stock  company  which  had 
now  taken  over  the  paper,  with  my  father  as  editor. 
With  its  four  hundred  inhabitants  less  Jefferson  was  so 
much  more  than  Ashtabula  a  village;  and  its  young 
gaieties  welcomed  us  and  our  little  force  of  printers  to  a 
social  liberty  and  equality  which  I  long  hoped  some  day 
to  paint  as  a  phase  of  American  civilization  worthy  the 
most  literal  fidelity  of  fiction.  But  I  shall  now  never  do 
that,  and  I  must  be  content  to  borrow  from  an  earlier 

81 


YEARS   OF   MY   YOUTH 

page  some  passages  which  uninventively  record  the  real 
events  and  conditions  of  our  enterprise. 

In  politics,  the  county  was  always  overwhelmingly 
Freesoil,  as  the  forerunner  of  the  Republican  party  was 
then  called;  the  Whigs  had  hardly  gathered  themselves 
together  since  the  defeat  of  General  Scott  for  the  Presi 
dency;  the  Democrats,  though  dominant  in  state  and  na 
tion,  and  faithful  to  slavery  at  every  election,  did  not  greatly 
outnumber  among  us  the  zealots  called  Comeouters,  who 
would  not  vote  at  all  under  a  Constitution  recognizing 
the  right  of  men  to  own  men.  Our  paper  was  Freesoil,  and 
its  field  was  large  among  that  vast  majority  of  the  peo 
ple  who  believed  that  slavery  would  finally  perish  if  kept 
out  of  the  territories  and  confined  to  the  old  Slave  States. 

The  people  of  the  county  were  mostly  farmers,  and 
of  these  nearly  all  were  dairymen.  The  few  manufac 
tures  were  on  a  small  scale,  except  perhaps  the  making  of 
oars,  which  were  shipped  all  over  the  world  from  the 
heart  of  the  primeval  forests  densely  wooding  the  vast 
levels  of  the  region.  The  portable  steam-sawmills 
dropped  down  on  the  borders  of  the  woods  have  long 
since  eaten  their  way  through  and  through  them,  and 
devoured  every  stick  of  timber  in  most  places,  and 
drunk  up  the  watercourses  that  the  woods  once  kept 
full;  but  at  that  time  half  the  land  was  in  the  shadow 
of  those  mighty  poplars  and  hickories,  elms  and  chest 
nuts,  ashes  and  hemlocks;  and  the  meadows  that  pas 
tured  the  herds  of  red  cattle  were  dotted  with  stumps 
as  thick  as  harvest  stubble.  Now  there  are  not  even 
stumps;  the  woods  are  gone,  and  the  watercourses  are 
torrents  in  spring  and  beds  of  dry  clay  in  summer.  The 
meadows  themselves  have  vanished,  for  it  has  been 
found  that  the  strong  yellow  soil  will  produce  more  in 
grain  than  in  milk.  There  is  more  money  in  the  hands 
of  the  farmers  there  now,  but  half  a  century  ago  there  was 

82 


YEARS    OF    MY    YOUTH 

so  much  less  that  fifty  dollars  seldom  passed  through  a 
farmer's  hands  in  a  year.  Payment  was  made  us  in 
kind  rather  than  in  coin,  and  every  sort  of  farm  produce 
was  legal  tender  at  the  printing-office.  Wood  was  wel 
come  in  any  quantity,  for  our  huge  box-stove  consumed 
it  with  inappeasable  voracity,  and  even  then  did  not 
heat  the  wide,  low  room  which  was  at  once  editorial- 
room,  composing-room,  and  press-room.  Perhaps  this 
was  not  so  much  the  fault  of  the  stove  as  of  the  build 
ing.  In  that  cold,  lake-shore  country  the  people  dwelt 
in  wooden  structures  almost  as  thin  and  flimsy  as  tents; 
and  often  in  the  first  winter  of  our  sojourn  the  type 
froze  solid  with  the  water  which  the  compositor  put  on 
it  when  he  wished  to  distribute  his  case,  placed  near  the 
window  so  as  to  get  all  the  light  there  was,  but  getting 
all  the  cold  there  was,  too.  From  time  to  time  the  com 
positor's  fingers  became  so  stiff  that  blowing  on  them 
would  not  avail;  he  made  many  excursions  between  his 
stand  and  the  stove;  in  severe  weather  he  practised  the 
device  of  warming  his  whole  case  of  types  by  the  fire, 
and,  when  they  lost  heat,  warming  it  again. 

The  first  floor  of  our  office-building  was  used  by  a 
sash-and-blind  factory;  there  was  a  machine-shop  some 
where  in  it,  and  a  mill  for  sawing  out  shingles;  and  it 
was  better  fitted  to  the  exercise  of  these  robust  industries 
than  to  the  requirements  of  our  more  delicate  craft. 
Later,  we  had  a  more  comfortable  place,  in  a  new  wooden 
"business  block,"  and  for  several  years  before  I  left 
it  the  office  was  domiciled  in  an  old  dwelling-house,  which 
we  bought,  and  which  we  used  without  much  change. 
It  could  never  have  been  a  very  comfortable  dwelling,  and 
my  associations  with  it  are  of  a  wintry  cold,  scarcely  less 
polar  than  that  we  were  inured  to  elsewhere.  In  fact, 
the  climate  of  that  region  is  rough  and  fierce;  I  know  that 
there  were  lovely  summers  and  lovelier  autumns  in  my 

S3 


YEARS    OF    MY    YOUTH 

time  there,  full  of  sunsets  of  a  strange,  wild,  melancholy 
splendor,  I  suppose  from  some  atmospheric  influence  of 
the  lake;  but  I  think  chiefly  of  the  winters,  so  awful  to  us 
after  the  mild  seasons  of  southern  Ohio;  the  frosts  of 
ten  and  twenty  below;  the  village  streets  and  the  coun 
try  roads  drowned  in  snow,  the  consumptives  in  the 
thin  houses,  and  the  "slipping"  as  the  sleighing  was 
called,  that  lasted  from  December  to  April  with  hardly 
a  break.  At  first  our  family  was  housed  on  a  farm 
a  little  way  out,  because  there  was  no  tenement  to  be 
had  in  the  village,  and  my  father  and  I  used  to  walk 
to  and  from  the  office  together  in  the  morning  and  eve 
ning.  I  had  taught  myself  to  read  Spanish,  in  my  pas 
sion  for  Don  Quixote,  and  I  was  now,  at  the  age  of  fifteen, 
intending  to  write  a  life  of  Cervantes.  The  scheme  oc 
cupied  me  a  good  deal  in  those  bleak  walks,  and  perhaps 
it  was  because  my  head  was  so  hot  with  it  that  my  feet 
were  always  very  cold;  but  my  father  assured  me  that 
they  would  get  warm  as  soon  as  my  boots  froze.  If  I 
have  never  yet  written  that  life  of  Cervantes,  on  the 
other  hand  I  have  never  been  quite  able  to  make  it  clear 
to  myself  why  my  feet  should  have  got  warm  when  my 
boots  froze. 


It  may  have  been  only  a  theory  of  his;  it  may  have 
been  a  joke.  He  had  a  great  many  theories  and  a 
great  many  jokes,  and  together  they  always  kept  life 
interesting  and  sunshiny  for  him.  With  his  serene  tem 
perament  and  his  happy  doubt  of  disaster  in  any  form, 
he  was  singularly  fitted  to  encounter  the  hardships 
of  a  country  editor's  lot.  But  for  the  moment,  and  for 
what  now  seems  a  long  time  after  the  removal  of  our 
paper  to  the  county-seat,  these  seem  to  have  vanished. 
The  printing-office  was  the  center  of  civic  and  social 

84 


YEARS    OF    MY    YOUTH 

interest;  it  was  frequented  by  visitors  at  all  times,  and  on 
publication  day  it  was  a  scene  of  gaiety  that  looks  a 
little  incredible  in  the  retrospect.  The  place  was  as  bare 
and  rude  as  a  printing-office  seems  always  to  be :  the  walls 
were  splotched  with  ink  and  the  floor  littered  with  refuse 
newspapers;  but,  lured  by  the  novelty  of  the  affair,  and 
perhaps  attracted  by  a  natural  curiosity  to  see  wThat  man 
ner  of  strange  men  the  printers  were,  the  school-girls  and 
young  ladies  of  the  village  flocked  in  and  made  it  like  a 
scene  of  comic  opera,  with  their  pretty  dresses  and  faces, 
their  eager  chatter  and  lively  energy  in  folding  the  papers 
and  addressing  them  to  the  subscribers,  while  our  fellow- 
citizens  of  the  place,  like  the  bassos  and  barytones  and 
tenors  of  the  chorus,  stood  about  and  looked  on  with 
faintly  sarcastic  faces.  It  would  not  do  to  think  now 
of  what  sorrow  life  and  death  have  since  wrought  for 
all  those  happy  young  creatures,  but  I  may  recall  with 
out  too  much  pathos  the  sensation  when  some  citizen 
volunteer  relaxed  from  his  gravity  far  enough  to  relieve 
the  regular  mercenary  at  the  crank  of  our  huge  power- 
press  wheel,  amid  the  applause  of  the  whole  company. 

We  were  very  vain  of  that  press,  which  replaced  the 
hand-press  hitherto  employed  in  printing  the  paper. 
This  was  of  the  style  and  make  of  the  hand-press  which 
superseded  the  Ramage  press  of  Franklin's  time;  but 
it  had  been  decided  to  signalize  our  new  departure  by 
the  purchase  of  a  power-press  of  modern  contrivance 
and  of  a  speed  fitted  to  meet  the  demands  of  a  sub 
scription-list  which  might  be  indefinitely  extended.  A 
deputation  of  the  leading  politicians  accompanied  the 
editor  to  New  York,  where  he  went  to  choose  the  ma 
chine,  and  where  he  bought  a  second-hand  Adams  press 
of  the  earliest  pattern  and  patent.  I  do  not  know,  or 
at  this  date  I  would  not  undertake  to  say,  just  what 
principle  governed  his  selection  of  this  superannuated 

85 


YEARS    OF    MY    YOUTH 

veteran;  it  seems  not  to  have  been  very  cheap;  but 
possibly  he  had  a  prescience  of  the  disabilities  which 
were  to  task  his  ingenuity  to  the  very  last  days  of  that 
press.  Certainly  no  man  of  less  gift  and  skill  could 
have  coped  with  its  infirmities,  and  I  am  sure  that  he 
thoroughly  enjoyed  nursing  it  into  such  activity  as  car 
ried  it  hysterically  through  those  far-off  publication  days. 
It  had  obscure  functional  disorders  of  various  kinds, 
so  that  it  would  from  time  to  time  cease  to  act,  and  would 
have  to  be  doctored  by  the  hour  before  it  would  go  on. 
There  was  probably  some  organic  trouble,  too,  for,  though 
it  did  not  really  fall  to  pieces  on  our  hands,  it  showed 
itself  incapable  of  profiting  by  several  improvements 
which  he  invented,  and  could,  no  doubt,  have  success 
fully  applied  to  the  press  if  its  constitution  had  not  been 
undermined.  It  went  with  a  crank  set  in  a  prodigious 
fly-wheel  which  revolved  at  a  great  rate,  till  it  came  to 
the  moment  of  making  the  impression,  when  the  whole 
mechanism  was  seized  with  such  a  reluctance  as  nothing 
but  an  heroic  effort  at  the  crank  could  overcome.  It 
finally  made  so  great  a  draught  upon  our  forces  that  it 
was  decided  to  substitute  steam  for  muscle  in  its  opera 
tion,  and  we  got  a  small  engine  which  could  fully  sym 
pathize  with  the  press  in  having  seen  better  days.  I  do 
not  know  that  there  was  anything  the  matter  with  the 
engine  itself,  but  the  boiler  had  some  peculiarities  which 
might  well  mystify  the  casual  spectator.  He  could  easily 
have  satisfied  himself  that  there  was  no  danger  of  its  blow 
ing  up  when  he  saw  my  brother  feeding  bran  or  corn- 
meal  into  its  safety-valve  in  order  to  fill  up  certain  seams 
or  fissures  in  it  which  caused  it  to  give  out  at  the  mo 
ments  of  the  greatest  reluctance  in  the  press.  But  still 
he  must  have  had  his  misgivings  of  latent  danger  of  some 
other  kind,  though  nothing  ever  actually  happened  of  a 

hurtful  character.     To  this  day  I  do  not  know  just  where 

86 


YEARS    OF    MY    YOUTH 

those  seams  or  fissures  were,  but  I  think  they  were  in 
the  boiler-head,  and  that  it  was  therefore  suffering  from 
a  kind  of  chronic  fracture  of  the  skull.  What  is  certain 
is  that,  somehow,  the  engine  and  the  press  did  always 
get  us  through  publication  day,  and  not  only  with  safety, 
but  often  with  credit;  so  that  many  years  after,  when  I 
was  at  home,  and  my  brother  and  I  were  looking  over  an 
old  file  of  the  paper,  we  found  it  much  better  printed  than 
either  of  us  expected;  as  well  printed,  in  fact,  as  if  it  had 
been  done  on  an  old  hand-press,  instead  of  the  steam- 
power  press  which  it  vaunted  the  use  of.  The  wonder  was 
that,  under  all  the  disadvantages,  the  paper  was  ever 
printed  on  our  steam-power  press  at  all;  it  was  little 
short  of  miraculous  that  it  was  legibly  printed,  and  alto 
gether  unaccountable  that  such  impressions  as  we  found 
in  that  file  could  come  from  it.  Of  course,  they  were 
not  average  impressions;  they  were  the  very  best  out 
of  the  whole  edition,  and  were  as  creditable  as  the  editorial 
make-up  of  the  sheet. 

VI 

Upon  the  whole,  our  paper  was  an  attempt  at  con 
scientious  and  self-respecting  journalism;  it  addressed 
itself  seriously  to  the  minds  of  its  readers;  it  sought 
to  form  their  tastes  and  opinions.  I  do  not  know  how 
much  it  influenced  them,  if  it  influenced  them  at  all, 
and  as  to  any  effect  beyond  the  circle  of  its  subscribers, 
that  cannot  be  imagined,  even  in  a  fond  retrospect. 
But  since  no  good  effort  is  altogether  lost,  I  am  sure 
that  this  endeavor  must  have  had  some  tacit  effect; 
and  I  am  sure  that  no  one  got  harm  from  a  sincerity  of 
conviction  that  devoted  itself  to  the  highest  interests 
of  the  reader,  that  appealed  to  nothing  base,  and  flattered 
nothing  foolish  in  him.  It  went  from  our  home  to  the 
homes  of  the  people  in  a  very  literal  sense,  for  my  father 
7  87 


YEARS    OF    MY    YOUTH 

usually  brought  his  exchanges  from  the  office  at  the  end 
of  his  day  there,  and  made  his  selections  or  wrote  his  edi 
torials  while  the  household  work  went  on  him,  about  and 
his  children  gathered  around  the  same  lamp,  with  their 
books  or  their  jokes;  there  were  a  good  many  of  both. 

Our  county  was  the  most  characteristic  of  that  re 
markable  group  of  counties  in  northern  Ohio  called  the 
Western  Reserve,  and  forty  years  ago  the  population 
was  almost  purely  New  England  in  origin,  either  by 
direct  settlement  from  Connecticut,  or  indirectly  after 
the  sojourn  of  a  generation  in  New  York  State.  We 
were  ourselves  from  southern  Ohio,  where  the  life  was 
then  strongly  tinged  by  the  adjoining  life  of  Kentucky 
and  Virginia,  and  we  found  these  transplanted  Yankees 
cold  and  blunt  in  their  manners;  but  we  did  not  under 
value  their  virtues.  They  were  very  radical  in  every  way, 
and  hospitable  to  novelty  of  all  kinds.  I  imagine  that  they 
tested  more  new  religions  and  new  patents  than  have  been 
even  heard  of  in  less  inquiring  communities.  When  we 
came  among  them  they  had  lately  been  swept  by  the 
fires  of  spiritualism,  which  left  behind  a  great  deal  of 
smoke  and  ashes  where  the  inherited  New  England  or 
thodoxy  had  been.  They  were  temperate,  hard-working, 
hard-thinking  folks,  who  dwelt  on  their  scattered  farms, 
and  came  up  to  the  county  fair  once  a  year,  when  they 
were  apt  to  visit  the  printing-office  and  pay  for  their 
papers.  They  thought  it  droll,  as  people  of  the  simpler 
occupations  are  apt  to  think  all  the  more  complex  arts; 
and  one  of  them  once  went  so  far  in  expression  of  his 
humorous  conception  as  to  say,  after  a  long  stare  at  one 
of  the  compositors  dodging  and  pecking  at  the  type  in 
his  case,  "Like  an  old  hen  pickin'  up  millet."  This  sort 
of  silence,  and  this  sort  of  comment,  both  exasperated 
the  printers,  who  took  their  revenge  as  they  could.  They 

fed  it  full,  once,  when  a  country  subscriber's  horse,  hitched 

88 


YEARS    OF    MY    YOUTH 

before  the  office,  crossed  his  hind  legs  and  sat  down  in 
his  harness  like  a  tired  man,  and  they  proposed  to  go 
out  and  offer  him  a  chair,  to  take  him  a  glass  of  water, 
and  ask  him  to  come  inside.  Fate  did  not  often  give  them 
such  innings;  they  mostly  had  to  create  their  chances  of 
reprisal,  but  they  did  not  mind  that. 

There  was  always  a  good  deal  of  talk  going  on,  but, 
although  we  were  very  ardent  politicians,  our  talk  was 
not  political.  When  it  was  not  mere  banter,  it  was 
mostly  literary;  we  disputed  about  authors  among 
ourselves  and  with  the  village  wits  who  dropped  in,  and 
liked  to  stand  with  their  backs  to  our  stove  and  challenge 
opinion  concerning  Holmes  and  Poe,  Irving  and  Macaulay, 
Pope  and  Byron,  Dickens  and  Shakespeare.  But  it  was 
Shakespeare  who  was  oftenest  on  our  tongues;  indeed, 
the  printing-office  of  former  days  had  so  much  affinity 
with  the  theater  that  compositors  and  comedians  were 
almost  convertible.  Religion  entered  a  good  deal  into  our 
discussions,  which  my  father,  the  most  tolerant  of  men, 
would  not  suffer  to  become  irreverant.  Part  of  his  duty, 
as  publisher  of  the  paper,  was  to  bear  patiently  with  the 
type  of  farmer  who  thought  he  wished  to  discontinue  his 
paper,  and  really  wished  to  be  talked  into  continuing  it. 
I  think  he  rather  enjoyed  letting  such  a  subscriber  talk 
himself  out,  and  carrying  him  from  point  to  point  in  his 
argument,  always  consenting  that  he  knew  best  what  he 
wanted  to  do,  but  skilfully  persuading  him  at  last  that 
a  home  paper  was  more  suited  to  his  needs  than  any  city 
substitute.  Once  I  could  have  given  the  heads  of  his 
reasoning,  but  they  are  gone  from  me  now. 

He  was  like  all  country  editors  then,  and  I  dare  say 
now,  in  being  a  printer  as  well  as  an  editor,  and  he  took 
a  just  share  in  the  mechanical  labors.  These  were  for 
merly  much  more  burdensome,  for  twice  or  thrice  the 
present  type-setting  was  then  done  in.  the  country  offices, 

89 


YEARS    OF    MY    YOUTH 

In  that  time  we  had  three  journeymen  at  work  and 
two  or  three  girl-compositors,  and  commonly  a  boy- 
apprentice  besides.  The  paper  was  richer  in  a  personal 
quality,  and  the  printing-office  was  unquestionably  more 
of  a  school.  After  we  began  to  take  girl-apprentices  it 
became  coeducative,  as  far  as  they  cared  to  profit  by  it; 
but  I  think  it  did  not  serve  to  widen  their  thoughts  or 
quicken  their  wits  as  it  did  those  of  the  boys.  They 
looked  to  their  craft  as  a  living,  not  as  a  life,  and  they 
had  no  pride  in  it.  They  did  not  learn  the  whole  trade, 
as  the  journeymen  had  done;  but  served  only  such  ap 
prenticeship  as  fitted  them  to  set  type;  and  their  earn 
ings  were  usually  as  great  at  the  end  of  a  month  as  at 
the  end  of  a  year. 

VII 

The  printing-office  had  been  my  school  from  childhood 
so  largely  that  I  could  almost  say  I  had  no  other,  but 
the  time  had  come,  even  before  this,  when  its  oppor 
tunities  did  not  satisfy  the  hunger  which  was  always  in 
me  for  knowledge  convertible  into  such  beauty  as  I 
imagined  and  wished  to  devote  my  life  to.  I  was  willing 
and  glad  to  do  my  part  in  helping  my  father,  but  he 
recognized  my  right  to  help  myself  forward  in  the  line 
of  my  own  longing,  and  it  was  early  arranged  that  I 
should  have  a  certain  measure  of  work  to  do,  and  when 
it  was  done  I  should  be  free  for  the  day.  My  task  was 
finished  early  in  the  afternoon,  and  then  my  consuming 
pleasures  began  when  I  had  already  done  a  man's  work. 
I  was  studying  four  or  five  languages,  blindly  and  blun 
deringly  enough,  but  with  a  confidence  at  which  I  can 
even  now  hardly  smile;  I  was  attempting  many  things  in 
verse  and  prose  which  I  seldom  carried  to  a  definite  close, 
and  I  was  reading,  reading,  reading,  right  and  left,  hither 

and  yon,  wherever  an  author  tempted  me.     J  was  not 

90 


YEARS    OF    MY    YOUTH 

meaning  to  do  less  than  the  greatest  things,  or  to  know 
less  than  the  most,  but  my  criticism  outran  my  perform 
ance  and  exacted  of  me  an  endeavor  for  the  perfection 
which  I  found  forever  beyond  me.  Far  into  the  night 
I  clung  to  my  labored  failures  in  rhyme  while  I  listened 
for  the  ticking  of  the  death-watch  in  the  walls  of  my  little 
stud}^;  or  if  I  had  imagined,  in  my  imitations  of  others' 
fiction,  some  character  that  the  poet  had  devoted  to  an 
early  death,  I  helplessly  identified  myself  with  that  char 
acter,  and  expected  his  fate.  It  was  the  day  when  this 
world  was  much  more  intimate  with  the  other  world 
than  it  is  now,  and  the  spiritualism  which  had  evoked  its 
phenomena  through  most  houses  in  the  village  had  left 
them  haunted  by  dread  sounds,  if  not  sights;  but  it 
was  not  yet  the  day  when  nervous  prostration  had  got 
its  name  or  was  known  in  its  nature.  For  me  this  malady 
came  in  the  hypochondria  which  was  misery  not  less 
real  because  at  the  end  of  the  ends  I  knew  it  to  be  the 
exaggeration  of  an  apprehension  without  ground  in 
reality. 

I  have  hesitated  to  make  any  record  of  this  episode, 
but  I  think  it  essential  to  the  study  of  my  very  morbid 
boyhood,  and  I  hope  some  knowledge  of  it  may  be  help 
ful  to  others  in  like  suffering.  Somehow  as  a  child  I 
had  always  had  a  terror  of  hydrophobia,  perhaps  from 
hearing  talk  of  that  poor  man  who  had  died  of  it  in  the 
town  where  we  then  lived,  and  when  years  afterward  I 
was,  as  I  have  told,  bitten  by  a  dog,  my  terror  was  the 
greater  because  I  happened  to  find  myself  alone  in  the 
house  when  I  ran  home.  I  had  heard  of  excising  a  snake 
bite  to  keep  the  venom  from  spreading,  and  I  would  now 
have  cut  out  the  place  with  my  knife,  if  I  had  known 
how.  In  the  end  I  did  nothing,  and  when  my  father 
came  home  he  did  not  have  the  wound  cauterized.  He 
may  have  believed  that  anything  which  tended  to  fix  my 

91 


YEARS    OF   MY    YOUTH 

mind  upon  it  would  be  bad,  and  perhaps  I  forgot  it  the 
sooner  for  his  decision.  I  have  not  forgotten  the  make 
of  the  gloomy  autumnal  afternoon  when  the  thing  hap 
pened,  or  the  moment  when  years  afterward  certain  un 
guarded  words  awoke  the  fear  in  me  which  as  many 
more  years  were  needed  to  allay.  By  some  chance  there 
was  talk  with  our  village  doctor  about  hydrophobia,  and 
the  capricious  way  the  poison  of  a  dog's  bite  may  work. 
"  Works  round  in  your  system,"  he  said,  "for  seven  years 
or  more,  and  then  it  breaks  out  and  kills  you."  The 
words  he  let  heedlessly  fall  fell  into  a  mind  prepared  by 
ill-health  for  their  deadly  potency,  and  when  the  summer 
heat  came  I  was  helpless  under  it.  Somehow  I  knew 
what  the  symptoms  of  the  malady  were,  and  I  began  to 
force  it  upon  myself  by  watching  for  them.  The  splash 
of  water  anywhere  was  a  sound  I  had  to  set  my  teeth 
against,  lest  the  dreaded  spasms  should  seize  me;  my 
fancy  turned  the  scent  of  the  forest  fires  burning  round 
the  village  into  the  subjective  odor  of  smoke  which  stifles 
the  victim.  I  had  no  release  from  my  obsession,  except 
in  the  dreamless  sleep  which  I  fell  into  exhausted  at 
night,  or  that  little  instant  of  waking  in  the  morning, 
when  I  had  not  yet  had  time  to  gather  my  terrors  about 
me,  or  to  begin  the  frenzied  stress  of  my  effort  to  ex 
perience  the  thing  I  dreaded.  There  was  no  longer 
question  of  work  for  me,  with  hand  or  head.  I  could 
read,  yes,  but  with  the  double  consciousness  in  which 
my  fear  haunted  every  line  and  word  without  barring 
the  sense  from  my  perception.  I  read  many  novels, 
where  the  strong  plot  befriended  me  and  formed  a  par 
tial  refuge,  but  I  did  not  attempt  escape  in  the  poor 
boyish  inventions,  verse  or  prose,  which  I  had  fondly 
trusted  might  be  literature.  Instinct  taught  me  that 
some  sort  of  bodily  fatigue  was  my  safety;  I  spent  the 

horrible  days  in  the  woods  with  a  gun,  or  in  the  fields 

92 


YEARS    OF    MY    YOUTH 

gathering  wild  berries,  and  walked  to  and  from  the  distant 
places  that  I  might  tire  myself  the  more.  My  father 
reasoned  to  the  same  effect  for  me,  and  helped  me  as 
best  he  could;  of  course  I  was  released  from  my  tasks 
in  the  printing-office,  and  he  took  me  with  him  in  driv 
ing  about  the  country  on  political  and  business  errands. 
We  could  not  have  spent  many  days  in  this  way,  when, 
as  it  seems,  I  woke  one  morning  in  a  sort  of  crisis,  and 
having  put  my  fear  to  the  test  of  water  suddenly  dashed 
from  a  doorway  beside  me  and  failed  of  the  convulsion 
which  I  was  always  expecting,  I  began  imperceptibly  to 
get  the  better  of  my  demon.  My  father's  talk  always 
distracted  me  somewhat,  and  that  morning  especially 
his  disgust  with  the  beefsteak  fried  in  lard  which  the 
landlady  gave  us  for  breakfast  at  the  country  tavern 
where  we  had  passed  the  night  must  even  have  amused 
me,  as  a  touch  of  the  comedy  blent  with  the  tragedy  in 
the  Shakespearian  drama  of  life.  But  no  doubt  a  more  real 
help  was  his  recurrence,  as  often  as  I  chose,  to  his  own 
youthful  suffering  from  hypochondria,  and  his  constantly 
repeated  assurance  that  I  not  only  would  not  and  could 
not  have  hydrophobia  from  that  out-dated  dog-bite,  but 
that  I  must  also  soon  cease  to  have  hypochondria.  I 
understood  as  well  as  he  that  it  was  not  the  fear  of  that 
malady  which  I  was  suffering,  but  the  fear  of  the  fear; 
that  I  was  in  no  hallucination,  no  illusion  as  to  the  facts, 
but  was  helpless  in  the  nervous  prostration  which  science, 
or  our  poor  village  medicine,  was  yet  many  years  from 
knowing  or  imagining.  I  have  heard  and  read  that  some 
times  people  in  their  apprehension  of  the  reality  can 
bring  on  a  false  hydrophobia  and  die  of  it  in  the  agonies 
their  fancy  creates.  It  may  be  so;  but  all  that  fear  could 
do  was  done  in  me;  and  I  did  not  die. 

I  could  not  absolutely  fix  the  moment  when  I  began 
to  find  my  way  out  of  the  cloud  of  misery  which  lowered 

93 


YEARS    OF    MY    YOUTH 

on  my  life,  but  I  think  that  it  was  when  I  had  gathered 
a  little  strength  in  my  forced  respite  from  work,  and  from 
the  passing  of  the  summer  heat.  It  was  as  if  the  frost 
which  people  used  to  think  put  an  end  to  the  poisonous 
miasm  of  the  swamps,  but  really  only  killed  the  insect 
sources  of  the  malaria,  had  wrought  a  like  sanitation 
in  my  fancy.  My  fear  when  it  once  lifted  never  quite 
overwhelmed  me  again,  but  it  was  years  before  I  could 
endure  the  sight  of  the  word  which  embodied  it;  I  shut 
the  book  or  threw  from  me  the  paper  where  I  found  it  in 
print;  and  even  now,  after  sixty  years,  I  cannot  bring 
myself  to  write  it  or  speak  it  without  some  such  shutting 
of  the  heart  as  I  knew  at  the  sight  or  sound  of  it  in  ttiat 
dreadful  time.  The  effect  went  deeper  than  I  could  say 
without  accusing  myself  of  exaggeration  for  both  good 
and  evil.  In  self-defense  I  learnt  to  practise  a  psycho 
logical  juggle;  I  came  to  deal  with  my  own  state  of 
mind  as  another  would  deal  with  it,  and  to  combat  my 
fears  as  if  they  were  alien. 

I  cannot  leave  this  confession  without  the  further  con 
fession  that  though  I  am  always  openly  afraid  of  dogs, 
secretly  I  am  always  fond  of  them;  and  it  is  only  fair 
to  add  that  they  reciprocate  my  liking  with  even  ex 
aggerated  affection.  Dogs,  especially  of  any  more 
ferocious  type,  make  up  to  me  in  spite  of  my  diffidence; 
and  at  a  hotel  where  we  were  once  passing  the  summer 
the  landlord's  bulldog,  ugliest  and  dreadest  of  his  tribe, 
used  to  divine  my  intention  of  a  drive  and  climb  into 
my  buggy,  where  he  couched  himself  on  my  feet,  with  a 
confidence  in  my  reciprocal  tenderness  which  I  was 
anxious  not  to  dispel  by  the  least  movement. 

VIII 

As  soon  as  my  nerves  regained  something  of  their 
former  tone,  I  renewed  my  struggle  with  those  alien 

94 


YEARS    OF    MY    YOUTH 

languages,  using  such  weapons  as  I  could  fit  my  hand 
to.  Notably  there  was  a  most  comprehensive  manual 
which,  because  it  proposed  instruction  in  so  many  lan 
guages,  I  called  (from  my  father's  invention  or  my  own, 
for  I  had  early  learnt  the  trick  of  his  drolling)  a  sixteen- 
bladed  grammar.  I  wish  now  I  could  see  that  book, 
which  did  not  include  Greek  or  Hebrew  or  German,  but 
abounded  in  examples  of  Latin,  Italian,  French,  Spanish 
and  probably  Portuguese,  and  other  tongues  of  that  kin 
ship,  with  literal  versions  of  the  texts.  These  versions 
falsified  the  native  order  of  the  words  to  the  end  that  the 
English  of  them  might  proceed  in  the  wonted  way,  and 
when  I  detected  the  imposition,  I  was  the  more  offended 
because  the  right  order  of  the  words  in  those  idioms  was 
always  perplexing  me.  The  sixteen-bladed  grammar  was 
superseded  by  the  ordinary  school-books,  Arnold's  for 
Latin,  and  Anthon's  for  Greek,  but  the  perplexities  of 
one  sort  or  other  persisted.  Such  a  very  little  instruction 
would  have  enlightened  me;  but  who  was  to  give  it  me? 
My  father,  perhaps,  but  he  may  not  have  known  how, 
though  in  his  own  youth  he  had  written  an  English  gram 
mar  and  more  or  less  taught  it,  or  he  may  have  thought  I 
would  find  it  out  for  myself.  He  would  have  tempera 
mentally  trusted  to  that;  he  was  always  prouder  than  I 
of  what  I  did  unaided;  he  believed  I  could  do  everything 
without  help.  That  was  an  error,  but  more  than  I  ever 
could  say  do  I  owe  to  his  taste  in  literature  and  the  con 
stant  guidance  up  to  a  certain  limit  which  he  gave  me. 
When  I  came  back  from  the  fields  and  woods  with  the 
sense  of  their  beauty,  and  eager  to  turn  it  into  literature, 
he  guarded  me  against  translating  it  in  the  terms  of  my 
English  poets,  with  their  larks  and  nightingales,  their 
daisies  and  cowslips.  He  contended  that  our  own  birds 
and  flowers  were  quite  as  good,  besides  being  genuine; 
but  he  taught  me  to  love  the  earlier  English  classics;  and 

95 


YEARS    OF    MY    YOUTH 

if  I  began  to  love  the  later  classics,  both  English  and 
American,  and  to  be  his  guide  in  turn,  this  is  only  say 
ing  that  each  one  is  born  of  his  generation.  The  time 
came  early  in  our  companionship  when  he  thought  fit 
to  tell  me  that  he  regarded  me  as  different  from  other 
boys  of  my  age;  and  I  had  a  very  great  and  sweet  hap 
piness  without  alloy  of  vanity,  from  his  serious  and  con 
sidered  words.  He  did  not  say  that  he  expected  great 
things  of  me;  though  I  had  to  check  his  fondness  in  offer 
ing  my  poor  endeavors  for  the  recognition  of  print,  and  I 
soon  had  the  support  of  editors  in  this.  But  he  justified 
himself  and  convinced  me  by  once  bringing  to  our  house 
a  kindly  editor  from  a  neighboring  city  whom  he  showed 
some  of  my  things,  and  who  carried  away  with  him 
one  of  the  minutely  realistic  sketches  in  which  I  had 
begun  to  practise  such  art  as  I  have  been  able  to 
carry  farthest.  When  week  after  week  the  handsome 
ly  printed  Ohio  Farmer  came  with  something  in  it, 
verse  or  prose,  which  I  had  done,  I  am  not  sure  I 
had  greater  joy  in  it  than  my  father,  though  now 
he  thought  it  well  to  hide  his  joy  as  I  always  did 
mine. 

All  the  while  I  was  doing  sketches  and  studies  and 
poems  for  our  own  paper,  which  I  put  into  type  without 
first  writing  them,  and  short  stories  imitated  from  some 
favorite  author  of  the  moment  with  an  art  which  I  imag 
ined  must  conceal  itself  from  the  reader.  Once  I  carried 
Shakespeare  beyond  himself  in  a  scene  transferred  from 
one  of  the  histories,  with  such  comedy  characters  as 
Pistol  and  Bardolph  speaking  the  interchangeable  prose 
and  verse  of  his  plays  in  adapting  themselves  to  some 
local  theme,  which  met  with  applause  from  the  group 
of  middle-aged  cronies  whom  I  most  consorted  with  at 
the  time.  Once,  also,  I  attempted  a  serial  romance  which, 
after  a  succession  of  several  numbers,  faltered  and  at 

96 


YEARS    OF    MY    YOUTH 

last  would  not  go  on.  I  have  told  in  another  place  how 
I  had  to  force  it  to  a  tragic  close  without  mercy  for  the 
heroine,  hurried  to  an  untimely  death  as  the  only  means 
of  getting  her  out  of  the  way,  and  I  will  not  repeat  the 
miserable  details  here.  It  was  a  thing  which  could  not 
meet  with  praise  from  any  one,  not  even  my  father, 
though  he  did  his  best  to  comfort  me  in  the  strange  dis 
aster. 

If  my  mother  was  the  heart,  he  was  the  soul  of  our 
family  life.  In  those  young  days  when  he  did  so  much 
of  his  newspaper  work  at  home  he  would  always  turn 
from  it  to  take  part  in  our  evening  jollity.  He  was 
gladly  our  equal  in  the  jokes  which  followed  around 
our  table;  and  when  he  was  stricken  in  his  great  age 
with  the  paralysis  which  he  rallied  from  for  a  time,  it  was 
his  joy  to  join  his  gray-haired  children  at  the  board  in 
his  wheeled  chair  and  share  in  their  laughing  and  mak 
ing  laugh,  j  It  seems  to  me  that  I  can  render  him  intel 
ligible  by  saying  that  while  my  very  religious-minded 
grandfather  expected  and  humbly  if  fervently  hoped  to 
reach  a  heaven  beyond  this  world  by  means  of  prayers 
and  hymns  and  revivals  and  conversions,  my  not  less 
religious-minded  father  lived  for  a  heaven  on  earth  in 
his  beloved  and  loving  home;  a  heaven  of  poetry  and 
humor,  and  good-will  and  right  thinking.!  He  made  it 
that  sort  of  heaven  for  himself,  and  as  he  was  the  bravest 
man  I  have  known  because  he  never  believed  there  was 
any  danger,  I  think  he  must  have  felt  himself  as  safe 
from  sorrow  in  it  as  if  he  were  in  the  world  beyond  this. 
When  one  of  my  younger  brothers  died,  he  was  as  if 
astonished  that  such  a  thing  could  be;  it  burst  his  inno 
cent  and  beautiful  dream;  and  afterward  when  I  first 
met  him,  I  was  aware  of  his  clinging,  a  broken  man,  to 
what  was  left  of  it.  Death  struck  again  and  again,  and 
he  shrank  under  the  bewildering  blows;  but  a  sense  of 

97 


YEARS    OF    MY    YOUTH 

that  inexpressible  pathos  of  his  first  bereavement  remains 
with  me. 


IX 


Tho  family  scene  that  passed  in  that  earlier  time  was 
not  always  as  icMlic  as  I  have  painted  it.  With  five 
brothers  in  it  there  was  often  the  strife  which  is  always 
openly  or  covertly  between  brothers.  My  elder  brother, 
who  was  four  years  my  elder,  had  changed  from  the  whim 
sical  tease  and  guardian  angel  of  our  childhood  to  the 
anxious  taskmaster  of  our  later  boyhood,  requiring  the 
same  devotion  in  our  common  work  that  his  conscience 
exacted  of  himself.  I  must  say  that  for  my  own  part  I 
labored  as  faithfully  as  he,  and  I  holly  resented  his  pres 
sure.  Hard  v.'onls  passed  between  us  tv,o,  as  blows,  not 
very  hard,  had  passed,  while  we  were  still  children,  be 
tween  me  and  my  younger  brothers.  But  however  light 
the  blows  were,  they  had  to  be  disclaimed,  and  formal 
regret  expressed,  at  my  father's  insistence.  He  would 
ascertain  who  struck  the  first  blow,  and  when  he  had 
pronounced  that  wrong  he  would  ask,  "And  you  struck 
him  back?"  If  the  fact  could  not  be  denied,  he  went  on 
to  the  further  question,  "Well,  do  two  wrongs  make  a 
right?"  Clearly  they  did  not,  and  nothing  remained  but 
reluctant  apology  and  reconciliation.  Reason  and  civic 
morality  were  on  his  side,  but  I  could  not  feel  that  jus 
tice  was,  and  it  seems  to  me  yet  that  the  primary  of 
fender  was  guiltier  than  the  secondary. 

Long  ago,  long  before  our  youth  was  passed,  utter  for 
giveness  passed  between  my  elder  brother  and  me.  The 
years  since  were  years  of  such  mutual  affection  as  I  could 
not  exaggerate  the  sense  of  in  tenderness  and  constancy, 
and  the  exchange  of  trust  and  honor.  He  came  even  in 
our  youth  to  understand  my  aim  in  life,  and  feel  what 


YEARS    OF    MY    YOUTH 

was  always  leading  me  on.  He  could  not  understand, 
perhaps,  why  poetry  in  literature  should  be  so  all  in  all 
with  me,  but  he  felt  it  in  nature  as  keenly  and  deeply  as 
I;  and  I  have  present  now  the  experience  of  driving 
with  him  one  September  afternoon  (on  some  chase  of  the 
delinquent  subscriber),  when  he  owned  by  his  few  spare 
words  the  unity  of  the  beautiful  in  everything  as  I  spoke 
the  melting  lines  of  Tennyson: 

"Tears,  idle  tears,  I  know  not  what  they  mean. 
Tears  from  the  depths  of  some  divine  despair 
Rise  in  the  heart  and  gather  to  the  eyes, 
In  looking  on  the  happy  autumn-fields, 
And  thinking  of  the  days  that  are  no  more." 

He  had  a  grotesque  humor  which  vented  itself  in  jokes 
at  the  expense  of  my  mother's  implicit  faith  in  everything 
he  said,  as  when  she  wondered  how  the  cow  got  into 
the  garden,  and  he  explained,  "She  pulled  out  the  peg 
with  her  teeth  and  put  it  under  her  fore  leg  and  just 
walked  through  the  gate,"  and  my  mother  answered, 
"Well,  indeed,  indeed,  I  believe  she  did,  child."  She 
had  little  humor  of  her  own,  but  she  had  a  childlike  hap 
piness  in  the  humor  of  us  others,  though  she  would  not 
suffer  joking  from  any  but  him.  She  relied  upon  him 
in  everything,  but  in  some  things  she  drew  a  sharp  line 
between  the  duties  of  her  boys  and  girls  in  the  tradition 
of  her  Pennsylvania  origin.  Indoor  work  was  for  girls, 
and  outdoor  for  boys,  and  we  shared  her  slight  for  the 
Yankee  men  who  went  by  our  gate  to  the  pasture  with 
their  milk-pails.  That  was  woman's  work  though  it  was 
outdoor  work;  and  though  it  was  outdoor  work  to  kill 
chickens  for  the  table,  none  of  us  boys  had  the  heart  to 
cut  their  heads  off  because  we  could  not  bear  to  witness 
their  post-mortem  struggles;  but  my  brother  brought  out 
his  gun  and  shot  them,  and  this  pursuit  of  them  as  game 


YEARS    OP    MY    YOUTH 

in  our  barnyard  got  us  over  a  difficulty  otherwise  in 
superable.  The  solution  of  our  scruple,  which  my  father 
shared,  must  have  amused  him;  but  my  brother  took  it 
seriously.  His  type  of  humor  was  in  the  praise  which  long 
afterward  he  gave  a  certain  passage  of  my  realistic  fiction, 
when  he  said  it  was  as  natural  as  the  toothache. 

Throughout  that  earlier  time  my  father's  chief  con 
cern  was  first  that  very  practical  affair  of  making  his  paper 
pay  for  the  office  and  the  house,  and  then  incidentally 
preventing  the  spread  of  slavery  into  the  territories.  He 
was  willing  enough,  I  fancy,  to  yield  his  silent  partner 
ship  in  my  studies  to  the  young  printer  who  now,  for 
no  reason  that  I  can  remember,  began  to  take  an  active 
share  in  them.  I  have  told  in  My  Literary  Passions  how 
J.  W.  and  I  read  Cervantes  and  Shakespeare  together;  but 
I  could  not  say  just  why  or  when  we  began  to  be  boon 
companions  in  our  self-conducted  inquiries  into  Latin 
and  Greek,  and  then  into  German,  which  presently  re 
placed  Spanish  in  my  affections  through  the  witchery  of 
Heine.  He  had  the  definite  purpose  of  making  those 
languages  help  him  to  a  professorship  in  a  Western  col 
lege,  but  if  I  had  any  clear  purpose  it  was  to  possess  my 
self  of  their  literature.  To  know  them  except  to  read 
them  I  do  not  think  I  cared;  I  did  not  try  to  speak  or 
write  the  modern  tongues;  to  this  day  I  could  not  frame 
a  proper  letter  in  Spanish,  German,  French,  or  Italian, 
but  I  have  a  literary  sense  of  them  all.  I  wished  to  taste 
the  fruit  of  my  study  before  I  had  climbed  the  tree  where 
it  grew,  and  in  a  manner  I  did  begin  to  gather  the  fruit 
without  the  interposition  of  the  tree.  Without  clear 
knowledge  of  their  grammatical  forms,  I  imitated  their 
literary  forms.  I  cast  my  poetry,  such  as  it  was,  into  the 
metres  of  the  Spanish  poets  I  was  reading,  and  without 
instruction  or  direction  I  acquainted  myself  with  much 
of  their  literary  history.  I  onet)  even  knew  from  the 

1QQ 


YEARS    OF    MY    YOUTH 

archaic  tragedy  of  her  name  who  Inez  de  Castro  was;  I 
do  not  know  now. 

My  friendship  with  J.  W.  early  became  chief  of  the 
many  friends  of  a  life  rich  in  friendships.  He  was  like 
most  of  his  craft  in  his  eccentric  comings  and  goings 
to  and  from  our  employ,  when  sometimes  we  had  no 
work  to  give  him,  and  sometimes  he  had  none  to  give 
us.  When  he  left  us  he  always  went  to  Wisconsin, 
where  he  had  once  lived;  and  when  he  came  back  from  one 
of  these  absences  he  would  bring  with  him  bits  of 
character  which  he  gave  for  our  joy  in  his  quaint  observ 
ance,  such  as  that  of  the  mother  who  complained  of  her 
daughter  because  "she  didn't  cultivate  her  features 
none;  she  just  let  'em  hing  and  wallop,"  or  the  school 
mistress  who  genteelly  explained  in  the  blackberry-patch 
where  he  found  her,  that  she  was  "just  out  picking  a 
few  berries  for  tea-he-he-he,"  or  the  country  bachelor 
who  belatedly  made  up  his  mind  to  marry,  and  in  his 
default  of  female  acquaintance  took  his  place  on  the  top 
rail  of  a  roadside  fence,  and  called  to  the  first  woman 
who  passed,  "Say!  You  a  married  woman?"  and  then  at 
the  frightened  answer,  indignantly  gasped  out,  "Yes,  sir!" 
offered  a  mere  "Oh!"  for  all  apology  and  explanation,  and 
let  himself  vanish  by  falling  into  the  corn-field  behind  him. 

J.  W.  literally  made  his  home  with  us,  for  as  if  the  bur 
den  of  work  for  our  own  large  family  were  not  enough  for 
my  mother,  we  had  always  some  of  the  printers,  men  or 
maids,  to  board.  He  entered  into  the  spirit  of  our  life; 
but  it  was  recognized  that  he  was  peculiarly  my  friend, 
and  we  were  left  to  our  special  comradeship.  In  that 
village  nearly  everybody  played  or  sang,  and  in  the  sum 
mer  nights  the  young  people  went  about  serenading  one 
another's  houses,  under  the  moon  which  was  then  always 
full;  and  J.  W.  shared  in  every  serenade  where  a  tenor 

voice  was  welcome.     At  the  printing-office,  in  the  after- 

101 


YEARS    OF    MY    YOUTH 

noon  when  the  compositors  were  distributing  their  cases, 
he  led  the  apprentice-girls  in  the  songs  which  once  filled 
the  whole  young  world.  The  songs  were  often  poverty- 
stricken  enough  in  sentiment,  and  I  suppose  cheap  and 
vulgar  in  music,  but  they  were  better  than  the  silence 
that  I  should  once  have  said  had  followed  them.  Yet  only 
last  winter  in  a  hotel  on  the  New  Jersey  coast,  where 
there  was  some  repairing  in  the  corridor  outside  my  room, 
the  young  painters  and  carpenters  gathered  at  their  lunch 
near  my  door,  and  after  they  had  begun  to  joke  they  sud 
denly  began  to  sing  together  as  if  it  were  still  the  habit 
for  people  of  their  lot  to  do  so,  in  a  world  I  had  thought 
so  hushed,  except  for  its  gramaphones;  and  though  I 
could  not  make  out  the  words,  the  gentle  music  somehow 
saved  them  from  seeming  common.  It  went  to  my  heart, 
and  made  me  glad  of  life  where  youth  still  sang  as  it  used 
to  sing  when  I  was  young. 

Sometimes  the  village  serenaders  came  to  me,  and  then 
I  left  my  books  and  stumbled  down  to  the  gate,  half 
dazed,  to  find  the  faces  I  knew  before  they  flashed  away 
with  gay  shrieking  and  shouting;  and  J.  W.  among  them, 
momentarily  estranged  from  me,  jealous  in  that  world 
where  we  had  our  intimacy.  My  ambition  was  my 
barrier  from  the  living  world  around  me;  I  could  not 
beat  my  way  from  it  into  that;  it  kept  me  absent  and 
hampered  me  in  the  vain  effort  to  be  part  of  the  reality 
I  have  always  tried  to  portray.  Though  J.  W.  expected 
to  make  a  more  definite  use  of  our  studies,  he  seemed  to 
understand  me  as  well  at  least  as  I  understood  myself  in 
my  vaguer  striving.  I  do  not  now  remember  reading  him 
the  things  I  was  trying  to  write;  or  of  his  speaking  to 
me  of  them.  Perhaps  my  shyness,  my  pride,  went  so  far 
as  keeping  them  from  him,  though  I  kept  from  him  so 
few  of  my  vagaries  in  that  region  of  hopes  and  fears  where 

youth  chieflv  has  its  being. 

102 


YEARS   OF   MY   YOUTH 

The  songs  he  had  were  as  many  as  the  stories,  but  there 
was  one  song,  often  on  the  tongues  of  the  village  serenaders, 
which  was  oftenest  on  his,  and  which  echoes  to  me  still 
from  those  serenades  and  those  choral  afternoons  in  the 
printing-office,  and  more  distinctly  yet  from  what  we  felt 
a  midnight  of  wild  adventure,  when  he  sang  it  alone.  We 
had  gone  to  call  together  on  two  of  our  village  girls  at 
school  fifteen  miles  away,  and  had  set  out  in  the  nattering 
temperature  of  a  January  thaw;  but  when  we  started 
home,  many  hours  into  the  dark,  the  wind  had  whipped 
round  from  the  south  to  the  north  and  had  frozen  the 
curdling  slush  into  icy  ruts  under  the  runners  of  our 
sleigh.  Our  coats  were  such  as  had  suited  the  thaw,  but 
J.  W.  had  a  pair  of  thin  cotton  gloves  for  driving,  while 
I  had  none.  We  took  turns  in  driving  at  first,  but  as  the 
way  lengthened  the  cold  strengthened  and  I  cowered 
definitively  under  our  buffalo  robe,  then  the  universal 
provision  against  the  rigor  of  winter  travel.  For  a  while 
we  shouted  together  in  some  drama  of  the  situation,  but 
by  and  by  our  fun  froze  at  our  lips,  and  then  J.  W.  began 
to  sing  that  song  he  used  oftenest  to  sing: 

"Talk  not  to  me  of  future  bliss, 
Talk  not  to  me  of  joys  gone  by! 
The  happiest  time  is  this!" 

He  kept  the  measure  of  the  tune  by  beating  on  the  robe 
above  my  head,  first  with  one  fist  and  then  the  other,  as 
he  passed  the  reins  from  hand  to  hand,  and  by  pounding 
with  both  feet  on  the  floor  of  the  sleigh  beside  me.  We 
lived  through  the  suffering  of  that  drive  partly  because 
he  was  twenty-two  years  old  and  I  was  eighteen,  but  partly 
also  because  we  realized  the  irony  of  the  song,  with  all  the 
joke  of  it.  Yet  it  was  a  long  nightmare  of  misery,  with 
a  moment  of  supreme  anguish,  when  we  stopped  at  the 
last  toll-gate,  two  miles  from  home,  and  the  keeper  came 
8  103 


YEARS    OF    MY    YOUTH 

shuddering  out  with  his  red  blot  of  a  lantern.  Then  the 
song  stopped  for  an  instant,  but  seems  to  have  begun 
again,  and  not  ended  till  we  sat  with  our  feet  in  the  oven 
of  the  kitchen  stove  at  home,  counting  our  adventure  all 
gain.  The  memory  of  it  brings  before  me  again  the  face 
of  my  friend,  with  its  beautiful  regularity  of  feature,  its 
pale  blue  eyes,  its  smooth,  rich,  girlish  complexion,  and 
its  challenging,  somewhat  mocking  smile.  But  the  date 
when  I  saw  him  last  in  life  is  lost  to  me.  He  went  to 
Wisconsin,  as  usual,  but  there  was  no  wonted  return;  we 
kept  each  other  present  in  the  long  letters  which  we  wrote 
so  long,  but  they  faltered  with  time  and  ceased,  and  I 
can  only  make  sure  now  that  he  got  the  professorship  he 
aimed  at  in  some  seat  of  learning  so  modest  that  it  has 
kept  its  name  from  me;  and  then,  years  after,  that  he 
went  into  the  war  for  the  Union  and  was  killed. 


I  had  now  begun  to  be  impatient  of  the  village,  and  when 
it  came  to  my  last  parting  with  J.  W.,  which  I  did  not  know 
was  the  last,  I  felt  the  life  very  dull  and  narrow  which  I 
had  once  found  so  vivid  and  ample.  There  had  come 
the  radiant  revelation  of  girlhood,  and  I  had  dwelt  in 
the  incredible  paradise  where  we  paired  or  were  paired 
off  each  with  some  girl  of  his  fancy  or  fancied  fancy. 
There  had  been  the  ranging  of  the  woods  in  autumn  for 
chestnuts  and  in  the  spring  for  wintergreen;  there  had 
been  the  sleigh-rides  to  the  other  villages  and  the  neigh 
boring  farms  where  there  was  young  life  waiting  to  wel 
come  us  through  the  drifting  snows;  there  had  been  the 
dances  at  the  taverns  and  the  parties  at  the  girls'  houses 
with  the  games  and  the  frolics,  and  the  going  home  each 
with  the  chosen  one  at  midnight  and  the  long  lingering  at 
the  gate:  there  had  been  the  moonlight  walks;  there  had 

104 


YEARS    OF    MY    YOUTH 

been  the  debating  societies  and  the  spelling-matches; 
there  had  been  the  days  of  the  County  Fair  and  the 
Fourths-of-July,  and  the  Christmases  rehabilitated  from 
Dickens;  and  there  had  been  the  impassioned  interest 
of  the  easily  guessed  anonymous  letters  of  St.  Valentine's 
day.  But  these  things  had  passed,  and  with  a  certain 
disappointment  suffered  and  yet  prized  there  had  come 
the  sense  of  spent  witchery  and  a  spell  outworn,  and  I 
chose  to  revolt  from  it  all  and  to  pine  for  a  wider  world 
and  prouder  pleasures.  Distance  in  time  and  space 
afterward  duly  set  the  village  I  had  wearied  of  in  a 
truer  and  kinder  light,  and  I  came  to  value  it  as  the 
potential  stuff  of  such  fiction  as  has  never  yet  been 
written,  and  now  never  will  be  by  me.  I  came  to  see 
that  it  abounded  in  characteristics  and  interests  which 
differenced  it  from  any  other  village,  and  I  still  think  the 
companionship  to  which  I  passed  in  the  absences  of  J.  W. 
such  as  would  make  into  the  setting  for  as  strange  a  story 
as  we  could  ask  of  reality  in  the  days  when  we  wished 
life  to  surpass  romance  in  strangeness. 

I  have  told  in  My  Literary  Passions  of  the  misanthropi 
cal  Englishman  who  led  in  our  Dickens-worship  and  played 
the  organ  in  the  little  Episcopal  church,  and  built  the 
organs  for  such  country  churches  about  as  could  afford  to 
replace  their  moaning  melodions  with  them.  I  have  said, 
I  hope  without  too  much  attempt  to  establish  the  fact, 
that  he  was  also  a  house-painter,  and  that  in  the  long 
leisures  of  our  summer  days  and  winter  nights  and  in 
the  throes  of  his  perpetual  dyspepsia  he  was  the  inveterate 
antagonist  in  argument  of  the  vivid  Yankee  who  built 
steam-engines  among  us,  and  had  taught  school,  and 
turned  his  quick  head  and  hand  to  any  art  or  trade  which 
making  an  easy  living  exacted  of  him.  They  both  lavishly 
lent  me  their  books,  and  admitted  me  on  equal  terms  to 
their  intellectual  enmity  and  amity,  which  was  shared 

105 


YEARS    OF    MY    YOUTH 

in  some  tacit  way  with  a  clever  New  England  trader  in 
watches,  clocks,  and  jewelry.  He  came  and  went  among 
us  on  visits  more  or  less  prolonged  from  some  Eastern 
center  of  his  'commerce  (my  memory  somehow  specifies 
Springfield,  Massachusetts),  and  he  had  a  shrewd  smile 
and  kindly  twinkling  eye  which  represent  him  to  me  yet. 
He  seldom  took  part  in  the  disputes  nightly  held  at  the 
drug-and-book  store;  but  not  from  want  of  spirit,  when 
he  had  the  boldness  to  deny  some  ferocious  opinion  ex 
ploded  by  the  organ-builder  in  an  access  of  indigestion. 

The  disputes  nearly  always  involved  question  of  the 
existence  of  a  God,  which  was  thought  improbable  by 
both  of  the  debaters,  and  the  immortality  of  the  soul, 
which  was  doubted,  in  spite  of  the  spiritualism  rife  in  every 
second  house  in  the  village,  with  manifestations  by  rap- 
pings,  table-tippings,  and  oral  and  written  messages  from 
another  world  through  psychics  of  either  sex,  but  oftenest 
the  young  girls  one  met  in  the  dances  and  sleigh-rides. 
The  community  was  prevalently  unreligious;  there  was  an 
ageing  attendance  at  the  Baptist  and  Methodist  churches, 
but  there  was  no  stated  service  of  the  Congregationalists, 
though  there  was  occasional  preaching  at  their  house 
and  sometimes  a  lecture  from  an  anti-slavery  apostle, 
who  wasted  his  doctrine  on  a  community  steeped  in  it 
already.  Among  many  of  the  young  people  of  the 
village  the  prevalent  tone  was  irreverent  to  mocking  in 
matters  of  religion;  but  their  unlimited  social  freedom 
was  without  blame  and  without  scandal,  and  if  our  vil 
lagers  were  not  religious,  they  were,  in  a  degree  which  I 
still  think  extraordinary,  literary.  Old  and  young  they 
read  and  talked  about  books,  and  better  books  than 
people  read  and  talk  about  now,  as  it  seems  to  me,  pos 
sibly  because  there  were  not  so  many  bad  ones;  the 
English  serials  pirated  into  our  magazines  were  followed 
and  discussed,  and  any  American  author  who  made  an 


YEARS   OF   MY   YOUTH 

effect  in  the  East  became  promptly  known  in  that  small 
village  of  the  Western  Reserve.  There  were  lawyers,  of 
those  abounding  at  every  county-seat,  who  were  fond  of 
reading,  and  imparted  their  taste  to  the  young  men 
studying  law  in  their  offices.  I  might  exaggerate  the 
fact,  but  I  do  not  think  I  have  done  so,  or  that  I  was 
much  deceived  as  to  a  condition  which  reported  itself, 
especially  to  me  whose  whole  life  was  in  books,  through 
the  sympathy  I  met  in  the  village  houses.  I  was  always 
reading  whatever  came  to  hand,  either  with  an  instinct 
for  what  was  good  in  my  choice  of  books  or  with  good 
fortune  in  my  chance  of  them.  Literature  was  so  com 
monly  accepted  as  a  real  interest,  that  I  do  not  think 
I  was  accounted  altogether  queer  in  my  devotion  to  it. 
To  be  sure,  at  an  evening  session  in  one  of  the  dry-goods 
and  grocery  stores  where  question  of  me  came  up,  it  was 
decided  that  I  would  be  nowhere  in  a  horse-trade,  but  this 
was  a  rare  instance  of  slight,  and  I  do  not  believe  that 
my  disability  would  have  been  generally  counted  against 
me. 

XI 

Somewhere  about  this  time  I  gave  a  month  to  the 
study  of  law  in  the  office  of  the  United  States  Senator 
dwelling  among  us.  I  have  never  regretted  reading  a 
first  volume  of  Blackstone  through,  or  not  going  on  to 
the  second;  his  frank  declaration  that  the  law  was  a 
jealous  mistress  and  would  brook  no  divided  love,  was 
upon  reflection  quite  enough  for  one  whose  heart  was 
given  to  a  different  muse.  I  was  usually  examined  in 
this  author  by  the  Senator's  nephew,  my  fellow-student, 
whom  I  examined  in  turn;  but  once,  at  least,  the  Senator 
himself  catechized  me,  though  he  presently  began  to  talk 
about  the  four  great  English  quarterly  reviews  which  I 
was  known  in  the  village  for  reading,  and  which  it  seemed 

107 


YEARS    OF    MY    YOUTH 

he  read  too.  No  doubt  he  found  me  more  perfect  in  them 
than  in  Blackstone;  at  least  I  felt  that  I  did  myself  more 
credit  in  them.  I  have  elsewhere  spoken  more  fully 
already  of  this  episode  of  my  life;  but  I  speak  of  it  again 
because  I  think  that  the  commonly  accepted  Wade 
legend  scarcely  does  justice  to  a  man  not  only  of  great 
native  power,  but  of  wider  cultivation  than  it  recognizes, 
and  I  would  like  to  do  what  I  can  to  repair  the  injustice. 
He  was  famed  in  contemporary  politics  as  Old  Ben  Wade 
before  he  had  passed  middle  life,  and  he  was  supposed 
to  stand  up  against  the  fierce  pro-slavery  leaders  in  Con 
gress  with  an  intrepidity  even  with  their  own.  He  had 
a  strong,  dark  face,  and  a  deep,  raucous  voice,  with  a 
defiant  laugh,  and  these  lent  their  support  to  the  popu 
lar  notion  of  him  as  a  rude  natural  force  unhelped  by 
teaching,  though  he  had  taught  himself  in  the  days  of 
his  early  struggle,  as  Lincoln  and  most  public  men  of 
his  time  had  done,  and  later  had  taught  others  as  country 
schoolmaster.  Farm-boy  and  cattle-drover  and  canal- 
digger,  more  had  remained  to  him  from  schoolmaster 
and  medical  student,  than  from  either  of  his  other  call 
ings,  and  though  he  became  part  of  our  history  without  the 
help  of  great  intellectual  refinement,  he  was  by  no  means 
without  intellectual  refinement,  or  without  the  ability 
to  estimate  the  value  of  it  in  others.  Naturally  he  might 
also  underestimate  it,  and  perhaps  it  was  from  an  underesti 
mate  that  he  judged  the  oratory  of  such  a  man  as  Charles 
Siimner,  to  whom  he  told  me  he  had  said  of  a  speech  of 
his,  "It's  all  very  well,  Sumner,  but  it  has  no  bones  in  it." 
Wade  was  supposed  by  his  more  ill-advised  admirers 
to  lend  especial  effect  to  his  righteous  convictions  by  a 
free  flow  of  profanity,  but  I  have  to  bear  witness  that  I 
never  heard  any  profanity  from  him,  though  profanity 
must  have  been  the  common  parlance  of  the  new  country 

and  the  rude  conditions  he  grew  up  in.     He  was  per- 

108 


YEARS    OF    MY    YOUTH 

sonally  a  man  of  silent  dignity,  as  we  saw  him  in  the 
village,  going  and  coming  at  the  post-office,  for  he  sel 
dom  seemed  to  pass  the  gate  of  his  house  yard  on  any 
other  errand,  in  the  long  summer  vacations  between  the 
sessions  of  the  many  Congresses  when  he  sojourned 
among  us.  I  have  the  sense  of  him  in  a  back  room  of  the 
office  which  stood  apart  from  his  house,  after  the  old- 
fashioned  use  of  country  lawyers'  and  doctors'  offices; 
and  I  can  be  sure  of  his  visiting  the  students  in  the  front 
room  only  that  once  when  he  catechized  me  in  Black- 
stone,  but  I  cannot  say  whether  I  stood  in  awe  of  him 
as  a  great  lawyer,  or  quite  realized  his  importance  as 
United  States  Senator  from  the  State  of  Ohio  for  eighteen 
years.  Historically  it  has  been  thought  his  misfortune 
to  outlive  the  period  when  the  political  struggle  with 
slavery  passed  into  the  Civil  War,  and  to  carry  into  that 
the  spirit  of  the  earlier  time,  with  his  fierce  alienation  from 
the  patient  policy  of  Lincoln,  and  his  espousal  of  the  ex 
aggerations  of  the  Reconstruction.  But  it  would  be  easy 
to  do  injustice  to  this  part  of  his  valiant  career,  and  not 
easy  to  do  justice  to  that  part  of  it  where  he  stood  with 
the  very  few  in  his  defiance  of  the  pro-slavery  aggression. 
Probably  he  would  not  have  understood  my  forsaking 
the  law,  and  I  evaded  the  explanation  he  once  sought 
of  me  when  we  met  in  the  street,  dreading  the  contempt 
which  I  might  well  have  fancied  in  him.  I  wish  now 
that,  knowing  him  a  little  on  his  aesthetic  side,  I  might 
have  had  the  courage  to  tell  him  why  I  could  not  give 
my  heart  to  that  jealous  mistress,  being  vowed  almost 
from  my  first  days  to  that  other  love  which  will  have 
my  fealty  to  the  last.  But  in  the  helplessness  of  youth 
I  could  not  even  imagine  doing  this,  and  I  had  to  remain 
in  my  dread  of  his  contempt.  Yet  he  may  not  have 
despised  me,  after  all.  It  was  known  with  what  single- 
handed  courage  I  was  carrying  on  my  struggle  with  the 

109 


YEARS    OF    MY    YOUTH 

alien  languages,  and  their  number  was  naturally  over 
stated.  The  general  interest  in  my  struggle  was  reflected 
in  the  offer  of  a  farmer  from  another  part  of  the  county  to 
be  one  of  three  or  four  who  would  see  me  through  Har 
vard.  It  was  good-will  which,  if  it  had  ever  materialized, 
my  pride  would  have  been  fierce  to  refuse;  but  now  I 
think  of  it  without  shame,  and  across  the  gulf  which  I 
would  fain  believe  has  some  thither  shore  I  should  like  to 
send  that  kind  man  the  thanks  which  I  fancy  were  never 
adequately  expressed  to  him  while  he  lived.  It  remains 
vaguely,  from  vague  personal  knowledge,  that  he  was  of 
Scotch  birth  and  breeding;  he  had  a  good  old  Scotch  name, 
and  he  lived  on  his  prosperous  farm  in  much  more  than 
the  usual  American  state,  with  many  books  about  him. 

I  went  back  not  without  shame,  but  also  not  without 
joy  from  the  Senator's  law-office  to  my  father's  printing- 
office,  and  I  did  not  go  to  Harvard,  or  to  any  college  or 
school  thereafter.  I  still  think  that  a  pity,  for  I  have 
never  agreed  with  Lowell,  who,  when  I  deplored  my 
want  of  schooling,  generously  instanced  his  own « over 
weight  of  learning  as  an  evil  I  had  escaped.  It  still 
seems  to  me  lamentable  that  I  should  have  had  to  grope 
my  way  and  so  imperfectly  find  it  where  a  little  light 
from  another's  lamp  would  have  instantly  shown  it.  I 
still  remain  in  depths  of  incredible  ignorance  as  to  some 
very  common  things;  for  at  school  I  never  got  beyond 
long  division  in  arithmetic,  and  after  my  self-discovery 
of  grammar  I  should  be  unable  to  say,  in  due  piedi,  just 
what  a  preposition  was,  though  I  am  aware  of  frequently 
using  that  part  of  speech,  and,  I  hope,  not  incorrectly. 

I  did  what  I  could  to  repair  the  defect  of  instruction, 
or  rather  I  tried  to  make  myself  do  it,  for  I  had  the  nature 
of  a  boy  to  contend  with,  and  did  not  love  my  work  so 
much  as  I  loved  the  effect  of  it.  While  I  live  I  must 

regret  that  want  of  instruction,  and  the  discipline  which 

110 


YEARS    OF    MY    YOUTH 

would  have  come  with  it,  though  Fortune,  as  if  she 
would  have  flattered  my  vanity  when  she  could  bring 
her  wheel  round  to  it,  bore  me  the  offer  of  professor 
ships  in  three  of  our  greatest  universities.  In  fact,  when 
I  thought  of  coming  home  from  my  consulship  in  Venice, 
ten  years  after  my  failure  to  achieve  any  sort  of  school 
ing,  it  had  been  my  hope  that  I  might  get  some  sort  of 
tutorship  in  a  very  modest  college,  and  I  wrote  to  Lowell 
about  it,  but  he  did  not  encourage  me.  Yet  I  was  hardly 
fixed  in  the  place  which  much  better  suited  me  as  the 
assistant  editor  of  the  Atlantic  Monthly,  when  one  of 
the  faculty  came  to  me  from  Schenectady  to  offer  me  the 
sub-professorship  of  English  in  Union  College,  and  no 
long  time  after  I  was  sounded  by  the  first  educational 
authority  in  the  country  as  to  whether  I  would  accept 
a  like  place  in  Washington  University  at  St.  Louis.  It 
was  twice  as  long  after  this  that  those  three  supreme  invi 
tations  which  I  have  boasted  came  to  me.  But  I  knew 
better  than  any  one,  unless  it  was  Fortune  herself,  the 
ignorance  I  had  hidden  so  long,  and  I  forbore  to  risk 
a  middling  novelist  on  the  chance  of  his  turning  out  a 
poor  professor,  or  none.  In  every  case  the  offer  was 
such  as  might  well  have  allured  me,  but  when,  after  a 
sleepless  night  of  longing  and  fearing  over  that  of  Harvard 
which  Lowell  conveyed  me  with  the  promise,  "You  shall 
wear  the  gown  that  Ticknor  wore,  and  Longfellow  wore, 
and  I  wore,"  I  had  the  strength  to  refuse  it,  he  wrote  me 
his  approval  of  my  decision.  It  was  a  decision  that  I 
have  rejoiced  in  ever  since,  with  the  breathless  gratitude, 
when  I  think  of  it,  of  one  who  has  withheld  himself  from 
a  step  over  the  brink  of  a  precipice. 

The  other  allurements  to  a  like  doom  were  hardly  less 
gratifying.  What  indeed  could  have  been  more  gratify 
ing,  except  the  Harvard  offer  of  the  professorship  of  the 
languages  of  the  south  of  Europe  (with  the  privilege  of 

ill 


YEARS    OF    MY    YOUTH 

two  years'  preparation  in  the  Latin  countries,  whose 
tongues  I  had  tampered  with),  than  the  offer  of  the  Eng 
lish  professorship  in  Yale?  It  was  Lounsbury,  now  late 
ly  lost  forever  to  these  skies,  Lounsbury  the  fine  scholar, 
the  charming  writer,  the  delightful  wit,  the  critic  unsur 
passed  in  his  kind,  who  came  smiling  with  the  kind  eyes, 
dimmed  almost  to  blindness  on  the  field  of  Gettysburg 
in  the  forgotten  soldiership  of  his  youth,  to  do  me  this 
incredible  honor.  Later  came  the  offer  of  the  same  chair 
in  Johns  Hopkins,  twice  repeated  by  the  president  of 
that  university.  When  in  my  longing  and  my  despair 
I  asked,  What  was  the  nature  of  such  a  professorship, 
he  answered,  Whatever  I  chose  to  make  it;  and  this  still 
seems  to  me,  however  mistaken  in  my  instance,  the  very 
measure  of  the  wisest  executive  large-mindedness.  Presi 
dent  Oilman  had  written  to  me  from  New  York,  and  had 
come  to  see  me  in  London,  and  again  written  to  me  in 
Boston,  and  I  could  not  do  less  than  go  down  to  Balti 
more  and  look  at  the  living  body  of  the  university  and 
see  what  part  in  it  I  might  become.  A  day  sufficed;  where 
so  many  men  were  busy  with  the  work  which  they  were 
so  singularly  qualified  to  do,  I  could  not  think  of  bring 
ing  my  half-heartedness  to  an  attempt  for  which  all  the 
common  sense  I  had  protested  my  unfitness,  my  entire 
unlikeness  to  the  kind  of  man  he  had  so  magnanimously 
misimagined  me.  I  turned  from  that  shining  oppor 
tunity  of  failure  as  I  turned  from  the  others,  and  if  the 
reader  thinks  I  have  dwelt  too  vaingloriously  upon  them 
he  shall  have  his  revenge  in  the  spectacle  of  my  further 
endeavors  not  to  be  the  stuff  which  professors  are  made  of. 


XII 

I  could  have  been  spared  from  the  printing-office  for 
the  study  of  the  law,  when  I  could  not  be  spared  from  it 

112 


YEARS    OF    MY    YOUTH 

otherwise,  because  I  might  soon  begin  to  make  my  liv 
ing  by  practising  before  justices  of  the  peace  in  the 
pettifogging  which  was  then  part  of  the  study  in  the 
country  offices.  My  labor,  which  was  worth  as  much  as 
a  journeyman  compositor's,  could  not  have  been  other 
wise  spared;  much  less  could  my  father  have  afforded 
the  expense  of  my  schooling;  and  I  cannot  recall  that 
I  thought  it  an  unjust  hardship  when  it  was  decided 
after  due  family  counsel,  that  I  could  not  be  sent  to 
an  academy  in  a  neighboring  village.  I  had  not  the 
means  of  estimating  my  loss;  but  the  event  seemed  to 
have  remained  a  poignant  regret  with  my  brother,  and 
in  after  years  he  lamented  what  he  felt  to  have  been  an 
irreparable  wrong  done  me:  now  he  is  dead,  and  it 
touches  me  to  think  he  should  have  felt  that,  for  I  never 
blamed  him,  and  I  am  glad  he  gave  me  the  chance  to 
tell  him  so.  I  may  have  shed  some  tears  when  first 
denied;  I  did  shed  a  few  very  bitter  ones  when  I  once 
confessed  the  hope  I  had  that  the  editor  of  the  Ohio 
Farmer  might  give  me  some  sort  of  literary  employment 
at  a  sum  I  named,  and  he  said,  "He  would  never  pay 
you  three  dollars  a  week  in  the  world  for  that,"  and  I 
had  to  own  in  anguish  of  soul  that  he  was  doubtless  right. 
He  worked  every  day  of  the  week  and  far  into  every  night 
to  help  my  father  earn  the  property  we  were  all  trying 
to  pay  for,  and  he  rightfully  came  into  the  eventual  owner 
ship  of  the  newspaper.  By  an  irony  of  fate  not  wholly 
unkind  he  continued  for  half  a  century  in  the  printing- 
business,  once  so  utterly  renounced.  Then,  after  a  few 
years  of  escape  to  a  consular  post  in  the  tropics  which 
he  used  to  say  was  the  one  post  which,  if  it  had  been 
whittled  out  of  the  whole  universe,  would  have  suited 
him  best,  he  died,  and  lies  buried  in  the  village,  the 
best-beloved  man  who  ever  lived  there. 

It  was  the  day  with  us  of  self-denials  which  I  cannot 

113 


YEARS    OF    MY    YOUTH 

trust  myself  to  tell  in  detail  lest  I  should  overtoil  them. 
I  was  willing  to  make  a  greater  figure  in  dress  than  nature 
has  ever  abetted  me  in,  but  I  still  do  not  think  it  was  from 
an  excess  of  vanity  that  I  once  showed  my  father  the 
condition  of  my  hat,  and  left  him  to  the  logic  of  the  fact. 
He  whimsically  verified  it,  and  said,  "Oh,  get  it  half- 
soled,"  as  if  it  had  been  a  shoe;  and  we  had  our  laugh 
together,  but  I  got  the  new  hat,  which,  after  all,  did  not 
make  me  the  dashing  presence  I  might  have  hoped,  though 
the  vision  of  it  on  the  storekeeper's  counter  always  re 
mained  so  distinct  with  me  that  in  Seville,  a  few  years  ago, 
it  seemed  as  if  its  ghost  were  haunting  me  in  the  Cordo- 
vese  hats  on  all  the  heads  I  met.  Like  them  it  had  a  wide 
flat  brim,  and  it  narrowed  slightly  upward  to  the  low  flat 
crown  of  those  hats  which  I  now  knew  better  than  to  buy. 
But  if  we  seem  to  have  spared  on  dress,  our  table  was  of 
as  unstinted  abundance  as  it  might  be  in  a  place  where 
there  was  no  market,  except  as  the  farmers  brought  us 
chickens  and  butter  and  vegetables  and  the  small  fruits 
of  the  pastures  and  clearings,  where  every  sort  of  wild 
berries  grew.  The  region  had  abounded  in  deer,  and 
after  we  came  to  the  village  in  1852  venison  was  only 
three  cents  a  pound.  Once  a  black  bear  was  chased 
from  forest  to  forest  across  our  land,  but  he  did  not  wait 
to  fix  the  market  price  of  his  meat;  halt  the  sky  was  often 
hidden  with  wild  pigeons,  and  there  was  a  summer 
when  the  gray  squirrels  swarmed  through  the  streets 
in  one  of  their  mystical  migrations  from  west  to  east. 
Such  chances  of  game  scarcely  enriched  our  larder;  and 
the  salt-pork  barrel  was  our  constant  reliance.  This  was 
a  hardship,  after  the  varied  abundance  of  the  larger  places 
where  we  had  lived,  but  we  shared  it  with  our  fellow- 
villagers,  and  in  this  as  in  other  conditions  of  our  life 
we  did  not  realize  as  deprivation  what  was  the  lot  of 
the  whole  community.  If  we  denied  ourselves  it  was 


YEARS    OF    MY    YOUTH 

to  meet  the  debts  which  would  not  be  denied,  and  to 
possess  ourselves  of  the  roof  over  our  heads  and  an  ampler 
future  in  the  ownership  of  our  means  of  living.  But  I 
think  we  denied  ourselves  too  much,  and  that  we  paid  far 
beyond  its  moral  worth  for  the  house  we  were  buying.  To 
own  the  house  she  lived  in  had  always  been  my  mother's 
dream  since  her  young  married  days  when  my  father 
built  the  first  little  house  where  they  dwelt  together,  and 
where  I  was  born.  In  all  the  intervening  quarter  of  a  cen 
tury  they  had  lived  in  rented  houses,  and  she  could  not 
help  feeling  that  the  rent  they  paid  ought  to  have  gone 
toward  buying  a  house  of  their  own.  In  this  she  was 
practically  right,  but  now  the  house  which  we  all  worked 
so  hard  to  buy  belongs  to  strangers,  and  unless  there  is 
an  effect  of  our  self-denial  in  some  other  world,  the  pur 
chase  was  as  much  waste  as  rent  paid  to  a  landlord. 
We  were  in  fact  always  paying  a  certain  rent  in  the  interest 
on  the  notes  which  we  slowly  accumulated  the  money  to 
meet,  but  my  mother  could  not  feel  that  the  same,  and 
I  am  glad  she  had  her  wish  long  before  she  died,  and  her 
last  years  were  passed  under  a  roof  which  she  owned. 

In  time,  but  I  do  not  know  how  long  time,  for  such 
things  did  not  interest  me,  though  I  was  doing  my  share 
in  helping  pay  off  our  debt,  the  promissory  notes  which 
my  father  had  given  for  the  purchase  of  our  newspaper 
were  taken  up,  and  the  newspaper  was  also  our  property. 
Nobody  could  molest  us  or  make  us  afraid  in  its  possession; 
and  in  my  hope  of  other  things  it  did  not  concern  me  that 
the  title  vested  in  his  partnership  with  my  brother,  who 
had  most  justly  earned  his  half,  and  who  by  an  enterprise 
of  his  own  finally  established  the  family  fortunes  in  un 
dreamed-of  prosperity.  It  was  characteristic  of  my  father 
that  as  long  as  their  partnership  existed  there  were  no 
accounts  between  them;  after  my  brother  had  a  family  of 

his  pwn  each  drew  from  the  common  income  at  his  wish 

115 


YEARS    OF    MY    YOUTH 

or  need,  and  when  I  came  of  sufficient  worldly  wisdom  to 
realize  the  risks  to  their  peace  from  this  anomalous 
arrangement,  I  protested  against  it  in  vain.  They  agreed 
with  me  that  it  was  precarious  and  in  a  way  ridiculous, 
and  that  it  certainly  ought  to  cease,  but  as  long  as  they 
continued  together  they  remained  partners  on  these 
terms.  After  my  father  withdrew,  my  brother  took  his 
own  son  into  partnership,  and  when  he  came  in  his  turn 
to  retire,  he  contritely  owned  to  me  that  they  had  not 
departed  from  the  same  old  unbusiness-like  community  of 
ways  and  means,  though  he  had  promised  me  very  ear 
nestly  many  times  to  end  it.  While  I  am  upon  these  mat 
ters  it  is  a  pleasure  for  me  to  record  that  when  I  came 
home  from  Venice  with  the  manuscript  of  Venetian  Life 
promised  publication  by  a  London  house  if  I  could  find 
an  American  house  to  take  half  the  proposed  edition,  and 
I  confessed  that  I  had  very  little  hope  of  getting  this 
taken  in  New  York  or  Boston,  my  brother  promptly  of 
fered  to  take  it  himself.  He  was  then  in  that  undreamed-of 
prosperity  which  I  have  mentioned,  and  though  he  had 
no  expectation  of  becoming  a  book-publisher,  he  was 
very  willing  to  incur  the  risks  involved.  As  all  my  world 
knows,  the  book  found  an  equally  courageous  friend 
in  New  York,  and  came  out  with  the  American  imprint  of 
Hurd  &  Houghton  instead  of  Joseph  A.  Howells  &  Co. 

It  is  not  surprising  to  me  that  I  cannot  date  the  time 
of  our  acquiring  the  newspaper,  free  and  clear,  as  the  real- 
estate  phrase  is,  but  I  am  certainly  surprised  and  more 
pained  that  I  cannot  remember  just  when  the  house,  en 
deared  to  us  as  home,  became  our  very  own.  Its  pos 
session,  as  I  have  said,  had  been  the  poetry  of  my  mother's 
hard-working,  loving  life,  and  no  doubt  she  had  watched 
with  hope  and  fear  the  maturing  of  each  of  the  notes  for 
it,  with  the  interest  they  bore,  until  the  last  was  paid 
off.  In  my  father's  buoyant  expectation  of  the  best  in 

116 


YEARS    OF    MY    YOUTH 

everything,  I  do  not  think  he  had  any  misgiving  of  the 
event;  my  brother  must  have  shared  my  mother's  anxiety, 
but  we  younger  children  did  not,  and  the  great  hour 
arrived  without  record  in  my  consciousness.  Years  later, 
when  I  came  back  from  long  sojourn  abroad,  I  found  that 
the  little  ground-wren's  nest,  as  it  looks  to  me  in  the 
retrospect,  had  widened  by  half  a  dozen  rooms  without 
rising  above  its  original  story  and  a  half.  All  round  it  the 
garden  space  was  red  and  purple  with  the  grapes  which 
my  father  had  induced,  by  his  steady  insistence, the  neigh 
boring  farmers  to  plant.  My  mother  and  he  were  grow 
ing  sweetly  old  in  the  keeping  of  the  place,  and  certain  wild 
furred  and  feathered  things  had  come  to  share  their  home 
with  them.  Not  only  the  door-yard  trees  which  we  boys 
had  brought  from  the  woods  had  each  its  colony  of  birds, 
but  in  the  eaves  a  family  of  flying-squirrels  had  nested. 
I  do  not  know  whether  I  can  impart  the  sense  of  peace  and 
security  which  seemed  to  have  spread  from  the  gentle 
household  to  them,  but  I  am  sure  that  my  mother  could 
not  have  realized  a  fonder  vision  of  the  home  she  had 
longed  for  through  so  many  years. 


XIII 

I  do  not  think  my  father  so  much  cared  for  the  ownership 
of  the  newspaper.  He  took  our  enterprise  more  easily  than 
my  elder  brother,  but  that  was  temperamental  in  both,  and 
one  was  no  more  devoted  than  the  other.  My  companion 
ship  was  far  more  with  my  father,  but  before  my  intimacy 
with  J.  W.  interrupted  this  my  studies  had  already  ascer 
tained  the  limits  of  his  learning  in  the  regions  where  I 
was  groping  my  way,  and  where  the  light  of  my  friend's 
greater  knowledge  now  made  him  my  guide.  If  J.  W. 
was  more  definite  in  his  ambition  of  one  day  getting  some 

sort  of  college  professorship  than  I  in  my  plans  of  literary 

117 


YEARS    OF    MY    YOUTH 

achievement,  he  could  not  have  been  more  intense  in 
his  devotion  to  what  we  were  trying  to  do.  I  was  study 
ing  those  languages  because  I  wished  to  possess  myself  of 
their  literatures;  still  groping  my  way  in  the  dark,  where 
a  little  light  shed  from  larger  learning  would  have  helped 
me  so  much.  The  grammars  and  the  text-books  could  tell 
me  what  I  wanted  to  know,  but  they  did  not  teach  it ;  and 
I  realize  now  as  I  could  not  then  that  self-taught  is  half- 
taught.  Yet  I  think  my  endeavor  merited  reward;  if  I 
worked  blindly,  I  worked  hard;  and  in  my  attempts  at  fic 
tion  or  at  verse  where  I  could  create  the  light  by  mere 
trituration,  as  it  were,  I  did  not  satisfy  myself  with  less 
than  final  perfection  so  far  as  I  could  imagine  it.  I  loved 
form,  I  loved  style,  I  loved  diction,  and  I  strove  for  them 
all,  rejecting  my  faultier  ideals  when  I  discovered  them, 
and  cleaving  to  the  truer.  In  some  things,  the  minor 
things,  I  was  of  wavering  preference;  I  wrote  a  different 
hand  every  other  week,  and  if  I  have  now  an  established 
handwriting  it  is  more  from  disgust  of  change  than  from 
preference.  In  the  spirit  of  my  endeavor  there  was  no 
variableness;  always  I  strove  for  grace,  for  distinctness, 
for  light;  and  my  soul  detests  obscurity  still.  That  is 
perhaps  why  I  am  beating  out  my  meaning  here  at  the 
risk  of  beating  it  into  thin  air. 

In  the  final  judgment  of  my  father's  help  and  unhelp  in 
my  endeavors,  I  should  say  that  they  were  the  measure 
of  his  possibility.  For  a  man  of  his  conditioning  he  had  a 
wonderful  outlook  in  many  directions  on  life,  but  he  was 
without  perspective;  he  could  not  see  how  my  unaided 
efforts  were  driving  to  the  vanishing-point.  He  had 
been  my  instructor  in  many  things  beyond  my  young  ken; 
he  had  an  instinct  for  beauty  and  truth;  he  loved  the 
poetry  which  was  the  best  in  his  youth,  though  he  did 
not  deny  me  the  belief  that  the  poetry  of  mine  was  bet 
ter  still;  his  gentle  intelligence  could  follow  me  where 

118 


YEARS    OF    MY    YOUTH 

his  liking  failed,  and  he  modestly  accepted  my  opinions. 
His  interest  had  once  been  absorbed  mostly,  but  not 
wholly,  by  the  faith  which  he  had  imbibed  from  his  read 
ing  of  Swedenborg,  but  when  I  began  to  know  him  as  a 
boy  may  know  his  elder,  he  was  more  and  more  con 
cerned  in  the  national  struggle  with  the  pro-slavery  ag 
gression.  Politics  had  always  been  his  main  worldly 
interest,  and  not  only  as  to  measures;  he  passionately 
favored  certain  men,  because  he  liked  the  nature  of  them, 
as  well  as  because  he  believed  them  right.  It  seems  to 
me  now  that  he  took  a  personal  interest  in  conventions 
and  nominations,  but  I  am  not  sure,  for  I  myself  took 
no  interest  whatever  in  them;  their  realities  did  not  con 
cern  me  so  much  as  the  least  unrealities  of  fiction;  and  I 
can  only  make  sure  of  my  father's  interest  in  the  elections 
after  the  nominations.  I  suppose  that  he  was  not  very 
skilled  in  practical  politics,  as  log-rolling  and  wire-pulling 
have  come  to  be  called,  though  in  a  village  which  was 
the  home  of  a  United  States  Senator,  a  Congressional 
Representative,  a  State  Senator,  and  a  Legislative  Rep 
resentative,  with  the  full  corps  of  county  office-holders, 
and  a  Common  Pleas  Judge,  the  science  might  well  have 
forced  itself  upon  his  study.  Many  years  after  our  com 
ing  to  the  Western  Reserve  he  was  sent  to  the  State 
Senate  by  a  war-majority  larger  than  any  majority  which 
had  yet  returned  a  candidate,  or  yet  has;  but  long  before 
that  he  began  to  find  his  way  beyond  the  local  favor  or 
disfavor,  and  was  chosen  one  of  the  House  clerks  in  the 
State  Legislature.  That  must  have  been  when  I  was 
eighteen  years  old,  but  he  seems  to  have  left  our  news 
paper  to  my  sole  charge  without  misgiving,  and  fortunate 
ly  no  trouble  came  of  his  trust  in  me.  I  was  then  taking 
my  civic  and  social  opinions  from  the  more  Tory  of  the 
English  quarterlies,  but  nobody  knew  what  I  meant  by 

them ;  I  did  not  know  myself,  and  I  did  no  harm  with  them. 
9  119 


YEARS    OF    MY    YOUTH 

In  the  mean  time  our  Congressman  was  writing  for 
us  every  week  from  Washington  a  letter  full  of  politics 
far  more  intelligible  to  our  readers  than  mine  were  to 
me.  He  was  that  Joshua  R.  Giddings,  early  one  of. 
the  paladins  of  anti-slavery  in  a  series  of  pro-slavery 
Congresses,  where  he  represented  and  distinguished  his 
district  for  twenty  years  after  his  resignation  under  a 
vote  of  censure  and  his  overwhelming  re-election.  But 
in  a  fatal  moment  of  that  fatigue  which  comes  to  elderly 
people,  he  finally  let  fall  an  expression  of  indifference  to 
office.  The  minor  and  meaner  men  of  his  party  who  were 
his  enemies  promptly  seized  the  chance  of  defeating  him 
for  the  nomination  which  was  equivalent  to  an  election  in 
our  district,  and  an  inferior  good  man  was  named  in  his 
place.  His  friends  would  have  had  him  contest  the  de 
cision  of  the  convention,  but  he  would  not,  and  he  passed 
into  private  life,  where  he  remained  till  the  favor  of  Lin 
coln  sought  him  out,  and  he  died  Consul-General  to 
Canada  after  he  had  lived  to  write  several  books  and 
to  tell  the  story  of  the  Civil  War  up  to  its  penultimate 
year.  Neither  he  nor  Wade  was  of  that  Connecticut 
lineage  which  almost  exclusively  peopled  the  Western 
Reserve,  and  especially  in  Ashtabula  County  desired 
power  and  place  to  itself.  Wade  was  from  western 
Massachusetts,  and  Giddings  was  from  western  Penn 
sylvania,  but  in  the  new  country  where  they  met,  they 
joined  their  forces  as  partners  in  the  law,  and  remained 
together  till  politics  separated  them  in  the  same  cause. 
They  still  remained  fellow-citizens  of  the  little  town 
where  they  spent  the  summer  leisure  of  the  Congres 
sional  adjournments,  but  without,  somehow  I  imagine, 
seeing  much  of  each  other.  Giddings  was  far  more 
freely  about  the  place,  where  his  youth  had  been  passed 
in  the  backwoods,  and  where  he  made  himself  familiarly 
at  home.  The  very  simplicity  of  the  place  seemed  to  com- 

-  120 


YEARS    OF    MY    YOUTH 

port  with  his  statesman-like  presence,  his  noble  head, 
and  his  great  Johnsonian  face,  when  he  came  out  of  his 
large  old-fashioned  dwelling,  sole  rival  of  the  Wade  man 
sion;  and  he  had  no  need  to  stoop  in  being  fellow-citizen 
with  the  least  of  his  constituents.  For  myself,  I  cannot 
recall  any  passage  of  words  with  him  after  a  forgotten 
introduction,  and  I  wish  it  had  been  otherwise.  I  wish 
now  I  could  have  known  him  even  as  a  boy  in  his  middle 
teens  may  know  a  man  of  his  make;  though  he  might  not 
have  said  anything  to  me  worth  remembering,  or  inspired 
me  to  any  expression  worthier  the  event  than  that  of  a 
Louisianian  whom  long  later  I  saw  introduced  to  him  in 
Columbus,  at  his  own  request.  The  Southerner  stared 
at  the  giant  bulk  of  the  man  who  must  have  long  em 
bodied  to  his  imagination  a  demoniacal  enmity  to  his 
section,  and  could  think  of  nothing  better  to  say  than, 
"Very  pretty  day,  Mr.  Giddings,"  and  when  Giddings 
had  assented  with,  "Yes,  sir,  a  fine  day,"  the  interview 
ended. 

"Giddings,  far  rougher  names  than  thine  have  grown 
Smoother  than  honey  on  the  lips  of  men," 

Lowell  wrote  in  one  of  those  magnanimous  sonnets  of 
his,  when  he  bent  from  his  orient  height  to  the  brave 
Westerner,  and  though  it  has  not  yet  come  quite  to  that 
honeyed  utterance,  the  name  cannot  be  forgotten  when 
the  story  of  our  Civil  War,  with  its  far  or  near  begin 
nings,  is  told. 

XIV 

That  winter  of  my  editorship  wore  away  to  the  ad 
journment  of  the  legislature  and  my  father's  return  home, 
after  J.  W.'s  withdrawal  into  the  vague  of  Wisconsin. 
But  now  another  beloved  friend  had  come  to  us.  He 

121 


YEARS    OF   MY    YOUTH 

had  learned  his  trade  with  us  in  southern  Ohio,  where  he 
lived  with  our  family  like  one  of  ourselves,  as  brotherly 
as  if  he  had  been  of  our  blood.  In  those  days  he  and  I 
read  the  same  books  and  dreamed  the  same  dreams,  but 
he  was  nearer  my  eldest  brother  in  age,  and  was  as  much 
his  companion  as  mine.  After  he  left  us  to  live  the  wan 
der-years  of  the  journeyman  printer,  we  heard  from  him  at 
different  points  where  he  rested,  and  when  the  Civil  War 
began  in  Kansas,  five  years  before  it  began  in  South 
Carolina,  we  knew  of  him  fighting  and  writing  on  the 
Free  State  side.  In  this  time,  my  brother  made  it  his 
romance  to  promote  a  correspondence  between  H.  G. 
and  a  young  girl  of  the  village,  which  ended  in  their  en 
gagement.  It  was  taking  too  great  a  risk  in  every  way, 
but  they  were  fitly  mated  in  their  tastes,  and  their  mar 
riage  was  of  such  lasting  attachment  that  when  she  sur 
vived  him  and  lay  suffering  in  her  last  sickness,  she 
prayed  every  night  that  she  might  die  before  she  woke 
and  be  with  him  in  the  everlasting  morning.  Romance 
for  romance,  I  think  their  romance  of  the  greatest  pathos 
of  any  I  have  known,  and  it  had  phases  of  the  highest 
tragedy.  H.  G.  was  among  the  first  to  volunteer  for  the 
great  war,  and  quickly  rose  from  the  ranks  to  be  captain, 
but  somehow  he  incurred  the  enmity  of  a  superior  officer 
who  was  able  to  have  him  cashiered  in  dishonor  from  the 
army.  The  great  war  which  we  look  back  upon  as  hal 
lowed  by  a  singleness  of  patriotic  purpose  was  marked 
by  many  private  wrongs  which  were  promptly  revenged, 
or  kept  for  ultimate  vengeance,  sometimes  forgone  at  last 
through  the  wearing  out  of  the  hate  which  cherished  them. 
I  am  glad  to  think  this  was  so  with  H.  G.;  his  memory 
is  very  dear  to  me,  and  our  friendship  was  of  a  warmth 
of  affection  such  as  I  did  not  know  for  J.  W.,  though  he 
had  so  much  greater  charm  for  me,  and  in  the  communion 

of  our  minds  I  was  so  much  more  intimate  with  him. 

122 


YEARS    OF    MY    YOUTH 

Earlier  in  his  absence,  I  had  grown  more  and  more  into 
intellectual  companionship  with  the  eldest  of  my  sisters, 
who  was  only  little  more  than  a  year  younger  than  my 
self.  We  had  gone  to  the  village  parties  and  dances  and 
sleigh-rides  together,  but  she  was  devoted  to  my  mother 
and  the  helper  in  her  work,  and  gave  herself  far  less 
than  I  to  the  pleasures  which  had  palled  upon  me;  she 
may  never  have  cared  for  them  much;  certainly  not  so 
much  as  for  the  household  lii'e.  It  is  one  of  those  unavailing 
regrets  which  gather  upon  us  if  we  question  memory  as  I 
am  doing  now,  and  try  to  deal  honestly  with  the  unsparing 
truth  of  its  replies,  that  I  ignored  so  long  her  willingness 
to  be  my  companion  in  the  things  of  the  mind.  With  my 
mother  it  was  a  simple  affair;  I  was  bound  to  her  in  an 
affection  which  was  as  devoted  throughout  my  youth  as 
it  had  been  in  my  childhood;  she  was  herself  the  home 
which  I  suffered  such  longing  for  if  I  ever  left  it;  and 
I  am  now,  in  my  old  age,  humbly  grateful  for  the  things 
I  was  prompted  to  do  in  my  love  of  her.  I  could  not, 
without  an  effect  of  exaggeration  unworthy  of  her  dear 
memory,  express  my  sense  of  her  motherly  perfection 
within  the  limits  of  her  nature,  which  I  would  not  now 
have  had  different  through  worldly  experience  or  priv 
ilege.  She  had,  like  my  father,  the  instinct  of  poetry; 
and  over  what  was  left  of  her  day's  work  for  the  long 
evenings  which  we  spent  reading  or  talking  or  laughing 
together,  while  my  father  selected  copy  for  his  paper 
without  losing  the  fun  we  all  made,  she  was  gay  with 
the  gayest  of  us.  Often  I  had  savagely  absented  myself 
from  the  rest,  but  when  I  came  out  of  my  little  study, 
dazed  with  my  work,  after  the  younger  children  had  gone 
to  bed,  I  have  the  vision  of  her  rolling  her  sewing  to 
gether  in  her  lap,  and  questioning  me  with  her  fond  eyes 
what  I  was  thinking  of  or  had  been  trying  to  do. 

I  believe  she  did  not  ask;  that  was  forbidden  by  my 
123 


YEARS    OF    MY    YOUTH 

pride  and  shame.  I  did  not  read  to  any  of  them  what 
I  had  been  writing;  they  would  not  have  been  hard 
enough  upon  it  to  satisfy  me,  though  if  they  had  criticized 
it  I  should  have  been  furious.  In  fact,  I  was  not  an  amiable 
or  at  least  a  reasonable  youth;  it  was  laid  upon  me  to  try 
solitarily  for  the  things  I  had  no  help  in  doing,  and  I 
seldom  admitted  any  one  to  the  results  until  that  sister  of 
mine  somehow  passed  my  ungracious  reserves.  I  do  not 
know  just  how  this  happened;  but  perhaps  it  was  through 
our  confiding  to  each  other,  brokenly,  almost  unspokenly, 
our  discontent  with  the  village  limit  of  our  lives.  Within 
our  home  we  had  the  great  world,  at  least  as  we  knew  it 
in  books,  with  us,  but  outside  of  it,  our  social  experience 
dwindled  to  the  measure  of  the  place.  I  have  tried  to 
say  how  uncommon  the  place  was  intellectually,  but  we 
disabled  it  on  that  side  because  it  did  not  realize  the  im 
possible  dreams  of  that  great  world  of  wealth,  of  fashion, 
of  haughtily  and  dazzlingly,  blindingly  brilliant  society, 
which  we  did  not  inconveniently  consider  we  were  alto 
gether  unfit  for.  The  reader  may  or  may  not  find  a 
pathos  in  our  looking  at  the  illustration  on  the  front  of  a 
piece  of  tawdry  sheet-music,  and  wondering  whether  it 
would  ever  be  our  high  fortune  to  mingle  with  a  company 
of  such  superbly  caparisoned  people  as  we  saw  pictured 
there,  playing  and  singing  and  listening. 

Vanity  so  criminal  as  ours,  might  have  been  for  a  just 
punishment  lastingly  immured  in  that  village  which  the 
primeval  woods  encircled  like  a  prison  wall;  and  yet 
almost  at  that  moment,  when  we  had  so  tardily  dis 
covered  ourselves  akin  in  our  tastes,  our  hopes  and  de 
spairs,  we  were  nearer  the  end  of  our  imprisonment  than 
we  could  have  imagined.  Whether  we  were  punished  in 
our  enlargement  which  we  were  both  so  near,  I  cannot 
say;  my  own  life  since  that  time  has  been  such  as  some 

know  and  any  may  know  who  care,  and  of  hers  I  may 

124 


YEARS    OF    MY    YOUTH 

scarcely  speak.  After  a  few  happy  weeks,  a  few  happy 
months  of  our  common  escape,  she  went  back  to  those 
bounds  where  her  duty  lay;  and  when  after  many  years 
she  escaped  from  them  again  it  was  to  circumstances 
where  she  was  so  willingly  useful  as  to  feel  herself  very 
happy.  Her  last  dream,  one  of  being  usefuler  yet  to 
those  dearest  to  her,  ended  in  a  nightmare  of  disappoint 
ment;  but  that  too  had  wholly  passed  before  she  woke 
to  the  recompense  which  we  try  to  believe  that  death 
shall  bring  to  all  who  suffer  here  to  no  final  good. 

Now  it  was  life  full  beyond  our  fondest  expectations, 
if  not  our  fancies  of  its  possibilities,  which  lured  us  for 
ward.  We  were  making  the  most  of  our  mutual  interest 
in  the  books  we  were  reading,  and  she  was  giving,  as 
sisters  give  so  far  beyond  the  giving  of  brothers,  her 
sympathy  to  me  in  what  I  was  trying  to  write.  It  was 
some  time  since  I  had  turned,  upon  the  counsel  of  J.  W., 
from  Greek  to  German,  I  forget  from  just  what  reason 
ing,  though  I  think  it  was  because  he  said  I  could  study 
Greek  any  time,  and  now  we  could  study  German  to 
gether.  I  had  gone  so  far  with  it  that  I  was  already  read 
ing  Heine  and  trying  to  write  like  him,  instead  of  reading 
my  Spanish  poets  and  trying  to  imitate  them  in  their 
own  meters.  But  there  is  scarcely  any  definite  memory 
of  my  sister's  literary  companionship  left  me.  I  remem 
ber  her  coming  to  me  once  with  the  praise,  which  I  shame 
facedly  refused,  of  the  neighbor  who  had  pointed  to  a  row 
of  Washington  Irving's  works  in  her  house,  and  said  that 
some  day  my  books  would  fill  a  shelf  like  that.  For  the 
rest,  I  am  dimly  aware  of  our  walking  summer  evenings 
down  a  certain  westward  way  from  our  house,  and  of  her 
helping  me  dream  a  literary  future.  If  she  had  then  a 
like  ambition  she  kept  it  from  me,  and  it  was  not  till 
twenty  years  later  that  she  sent  me  a  play  she  had  written, 
with  village  motives  and  village  realities,  treated  with  a 

125 


YEARS    OF    MY    YOUTH 

frankness  which  I  still  had  not  the  intelligence  to  value. 
The  play  never  came  to  the  stage,  and  in  that  farther  time, 
it  was  the  fruition  of  hopes  which  had  not  defined  them 
selves,  that  when  my  father's  scheme  was  realized,  not 
only  I,  but  she  too,  was  to  return  to  Columbus  with  him. 
It  would  be  easy  to  pretend,  and  I  can  easily  believe  that 
we  had  always,  at  the  bottom  of  our  hearts,  thought  of 
Columbus  with  distinct  longing;  but  I  am  not  sure 
that  there  was  more  in  our  remembrance  of  it  than  a 
sense  of  its  greatness  as  the  state  capital  to  give  direction 
to  our  ambition  for  some  experience  of  the  world  beyond 
our  village.  There  was  no  part  for  her  in  our  journalistic 
plan;  probably  the  affair  for  her  was  an  outing  which 
she  had  won  by  her  unselfish  devotion  to  the  duties  of 
her  narrow  lot;  but  what  I  am  sure  of,  and  what  I  am  glad 
of  now,  amidst  my  compunctions  for  not  valuing  her 
loving  loyalty  at  its  true  worth,  is  that  she  did  have  this 
outing. 


Ill 


THROUGHOUT  his  later  boyhood  and  into  his  earlier 
manhood  the  youth  is  always  striving  away  from  his 
home  and  the  things  of  it.  With  whatever  pain  he  suffers 
through  the  longing  for  them,  he  must  deny  them;  he 
must  cleave  to  the  world  and  the  things  of  it ;  that  is  his 
fate,  that  is  the  condition  of  all  achievement  and  advance 
ment  for  him.  He  will  be  many  times  ridiculous  and 
sometimes  contemptible,  he  will  be  mean  and  selfish 
upon  occasion;  but  he  can  scarcely  otherwise  be  a  man; 
the  great  matter  for  him  is  to  keep  some  place  in  his  soul 
where  he  shall  be  ashamed.  Let  him  not  be  afraid  of 
being  too  unsparing  in  his  memories;  the  instinct  of 
self-preservation  will  safeguard  him  from  showing  him 
self  quite  as  he  was.  No  man,  unless  he  puts  on  the  mask 
of  fiction,  can  show  his  real  face  or  the  will  behind  it. 
For  this  reason  the  only  real  biographies  are  the  novels, 
and  every  novel,  if  it  is  honest,  will  be  the  autobiography 
of  the  author  and  biography  of  the  reader. 


It  was  doubtless  a  time  of  intense  emotion  for  our 
whole  family  when  my  sister  and  I  set  out  for  the  state 
capital  with  my  father  on  his  return  to  his  clerical  duties 
at  the  meeting  of  the  legislature  in  1856.  If  I  cannot 
make  sure  that  Columbus  had  become  with  those  of  us 
old  enough  to  idealize  it,  a  sort  of  metropolis  of  the  mind  to 

* 


YEARS    OF    MY    YOUTH 

which  we  should  repair  if  we  were  good  enough,  or, 
failing  that,  if  fortune  were  ever  kind  enough,  I  am 
certain  that  my  father's  sojourn  there,  with  his  several 
visits  to  us  during  the  winter  before,  had  kept  the 
wonder  of  it  warm  in  my  heart.  The  books  that 
he  brought  me  at  each  return  from  the  State  Library 
renewed  in  me  the  sense  of  a  capital  which  he  had 
tried  to  implant  in  me  when  we  lived  there,  and  my 
sister  could  not  have  dreamt  of  anything  grander  or 
gayer.  Perhaps  we  both  still  saw  ourselves  there  in 
scenes  like  that  in  the  title-page  of  that  piece  of  sheet- 
music;  but  anything  so  definite  as  this  I  cannot  be 
sure  of. 

What  I  can  be  sure  of  is  the  substantial  nature  and 
occasion  of  our  going,  so  far  as  I  was  concerned.  "We 
were  to  furnish,"  my  father  and  I,  as  I  have  told  in 
My  Literary  Passions,  "a  daily  letter  giving  an  account 
of  the  legislative  proceedings,  which  I  was  mainly  to 
write  from  material  he  helped  me  get  together.  The 
letters  at  once  found  favor  with  the  editors,  who  agreed 
to  take  them,  and  my  father  then  withdrew  from  the 
work,  after  telling  them  who  was  doing  it."  My  sister 
of  course  had  no  part  in  the  enterprise,  and  for  her  our 
adventure  was  pure  pleasure,  the  pleasure  we  both  took 
in  our  escape  from  the  village,  and  the  pleasure  I  did  not 
understand  then  that  she  had  in  witnessing  my  literary 
hopes  and  labors. 

In  like  manner  I  am  belatedly  sensible  of  the  interest 
which  our  dear  H.  G.  took  in  our  going,  and  the  specific 
instructions  which  he  gave  me  for  my  entry  into  the  great 
world;  as  if  he  would  realize  in  my  prosperous  future  the 
triumphs  which  fortune  had  denied  him  in  his  past.  He 
adjured  me  not  to  be  abashed  in  any  company,  but  face 
the  proudest  down  and  make  audacity  do  the  part 
of  the  courage  I  was  lacking  in.  Especially  he  would 

128 


YEARS   OF   MY    YOUTH 

have  me  not  distrust  myself  in  such  a  social  essential  as 
dancing,  which  was  a  grace  I  was  confessedly  imperfect  in, 
but  to  exhaust  the  opportunities  of  improving  it  which 
the  Saturday  evening  hops  at  our  hotel  would  give  me. 
He  advised  me  not  to  dress  poorly,  but  go  to  the  full 
length  of  Polonius's  precept — 

"Costly  thy  habit  as  thy  purse  can  buy" — 

though  what  advantages  his  own  experiences  in  these 

matters  had  won  him  could  not  have  been  very  signal. 

I  He  knew  my  ambition  in  that  way,  and  how  it  had  been 

I  defeated  by  the  friendly  zeal  of  our  home-tailor;    and 

\we  both  held  that  with  the  clothing-stores  of  Pligh  Street 

open  to  my  money  all  I  had  to  do  was  to  fix  my  mind 

upon  a  given  suit  which  would  fit  me  as  perfectly  as  the 

;  Jew  said,  and  then  wear  it  away  triumphantly  appareled 

Ifor  the  highest  circles.     We  did  not  know  that  the  art  of 

dressing  well,  or  fashionably,  comes  from  deep  and  ear- 

^iest  study,  and  that  the  instinct  of  it  might  well  have 

been  blunted  in  me  by  my  Quaker  descent,  with  that 

desire  to  shine  rather  in  the  Other  World  than  in  this 

which  had  become  a  passion  with  my  grandfather. 

No  fact  of  my  leaving  home  upon  the  occasion  which  I 
must  have  felt  so  tremendous  remains  with  me.  I 
cannot  even  say  whether  it  was  through  the  snow  or  the 
mud  that  we  drove  ten  miles  from  the  county-seat  to  the 
railroad  station  at  Ashtabula;  whatever  the  going,  it 
was  over  the  warped  and  broken  boards  of  the  ancient 
plank-road  which  made  any  transit  possible  in  that 
region  of  snow  and  mud,  and  remained  till  literally  worn 
away  even  in  the  conception  of  the  toll-taker.  Without 
intervening  event,  so  far  as  my  memory  testifies,  or 
circumstance,  any  more  than  if  we  had  flown  through  the 
air,  we  were  there  in  Columbus  together,  living  in  an  old-  l^ 
fashioned  hotel  on  the  northward  stretch  of  High  Street,  • 

129 


YEARS    OF    MY    YOUTH 

which  was  then  the  principal  business  street,  and  for 
anything  I  know  is  so  yet.  j  The  hotel  was  important  to 
the  eye  of  our  village  strangeness,  but  it  was  perhaps 
temperamentally  of  the  sort  of  comfortable  taverns 
which  the  hotels  had  come  to  displace.  My  father  had 
gone  to  live  there  because  he  knew  it  from  our  brief 
sojourn  when  we  came  to  the  city  from  the  country  five 
or  six  years  before,  and  because  it  was  better  suited  to  his 
means;  but  one  of  the  vividest  impressions  of  his  youth 
had  been  the  building  of  the  National  Road,  a  work  so 
monumental  for  the  new  country  it  traversed,  and  he 
poetically  valued  the  Goodale  House  for  facing  upon  this 
road,  which  in  its  course  from  Baltimore  to  St.  Louis 
became  High  Street  in  Columbus. 

Not  even  in  this  association  could  it  be  equaled  with  the 
Neil  House,  then  the  finest  hotel  in  the  West,  without 
a  peer  even  in  Cincinnati.  Dickens,  in  his  apparently 
unreasoned  wanderings,  paused  in  it  over  a  day,  and 
admired  its  finish  in  black-walnut,  the  wood  that  came 
afterward  to  be  so  precious  for  the  ugliest  furniture  ever 
made.  /All  visitors  of  distinction  sojourned  there,  and  it 
was  the^  resort  of  the  great  politicians  who  held  their 
conclaves  in  its  gloomy  corridors  and  in  its  office  and  bar 
on  the  eve  of  nominating  conventions  or  the  approach 
of  general  elections.  I  have  a  vision,  which  may  be 
too  fond,  of  their  sitting  under  its  porches  in  tilted  arm 
chairs  as  the  weather  softened,  canvassing  the  civic  affairs 
which  might  not  have  been  brought  to  a  happy  issue 
without  them.  But  however  misled  I  may  be  in  this 
I  cannot  err  in  my  vision  of  the  stately  conflagration 
which  went  up  with  the  hotel  one  windless  night,  a 
mighty  front  of  flame  hooded  with  somber  smoke.  I 
watched  it  with  a  vast  crowd  from  the  steps  of  the  State 
House  which  it  was  worthier  to  face  than  any  other 
edifice  of  the  little  city;  but  this  was  long  after  that 

130 


YEARS    OF    MY    YOUTH 

winter  of  ours  in  the  Goodale  House,  which  I  remember 
for  the  boundless  abundance  of  its  table  and  for  those 
society  events  which  on  Saturday  nights  crowned  the 
week. 

I  dare  say  they  were  not  so  fashionable  as  H.  G.  imag 
ined  them,  or  I,  with  a  heart  too  weak  and  feet  too  un 
tutored  ever  to  join  in  them,  but  the  world  was  present 
in  other  sophistications  in  our  pleasant  hotel  which  I 
could  not  so  easily  shun.  Chief  of  these  was  the  tipping, 
which  there  first  insisted  on  my  acquaintance  by  many 
polite  insinuations,  and  when  I  would  have  withdrawn 
became  explicit.  The  kind  colored  waiter  who  used  to 
cumber  me  with  service  at  table  as  his  anxieties  mounted 
once  took  courage  to  whisper  in  my  ear  that  he  thought 
he  would  like  to  go  to  the  theater  that  evening,  and  it 
grieves  me  yet  to  think  that  I  resented  this  freedom,  and 
denied  him  the  quarter  he  suggested.  Since  then  life  has 
been  full  of  the  experiences  of  tipping,  always  so  odious, 
though  apparently  more  rapacious  than  it  really  is,  but 
I  have  never  again  been  able  to  deny  a  tip,  or  to  give  so 
little  as  I  would  often  like  to  give.  I  know  that  some 
better  citizens,  or  wiser,  than  myself,  punish  the  neglect 
or  ingratitude  of  service  by  diminishing  or  withholding 
the  tip,  but  I  have  never  been  able  to  perform  this  public- 
spirited  duty,  perhaps  because,  though  I  loathe  tipping,  I 
do  not  believe  any  fellow-creature 

"As  meek  and  mere  a  serving-man," 

as  may  be,  would  take  a  tip  if  he  were  paid  a  just  wage, 
or  any  wage,  without  it. 

But  all  these  incidents  and  interests  were  far  in  the 
future  of  that  brave  and  happy  time  when  I  was  intending 
and  attempting  the  conquest  of  the  whole  field  of  polite 
learning  from  so  many  sides,  in  the  studies  which  as  at 
home  now  went  on  far  into  the  night.  These  even  included 

131 


YEARS   OF    MY    YOUTH 

an  Icelandic  grammar,  for  the  reason  that,  as  I  had 
read,  the  meter  of  Hiawatha  was  derived  from  that  lit 
erature,  but  I  do  not  know  that  I  got  so  far  as  to  iden 
tify  it.  My  reading,  now  entirely  from  the  State  Library, 
included  all  the  novels  of  Bulwer,  which  I  was  not  ashamed 
to  enjoy  after  my  more  distinguished  pleasure  in  Thack 
eray;  the  critical  authorities  would  not  then  have  abashed 
me  in  it,  as  they  would  now.  The  other  day  I  saw  on  my 
shelves  the  volume  of  Percy's  Reliques  which  my  sister 
and  I  read  together  that  winter;  and  I  was  so  constantly 
and  devotedly  reading  Tennyson  and  Shakespeare  that 
I  cannot  understand  how  I  had  time  for  an  equal  constancy 
and  devotion  to  Heine.  I  saw  how  much  he  had  profited 
by  the  love  of  those  English  ballads  which  I  was  proud 
to  share  with  him;  and  there  were  other  German  poets 
of  his  generation  whose  indebtedness  to  them  I  perceived 
and  enjoyed.  I  was  now,  in  fact,  reading  German  to  the 
entire  neglect  of  Spanish;  as  for  Latin  and  Greek,  I  had 
no  more  time  or  relish  for  them  than  those  cultivated 
gentlemen  who  believe  they  read  some  Latin  or  Greek 
author  every  day  before  breakfast. 


ii 

The  life  and  the  letters  continued  on  terms  which  I 
should  not  have  known  how  to  wish  different.  I  had 
a  desk  appointed  me  on  the  floor  of  the  Senate  as  good 
as  any  Senator's,  for  my  convenience  as  a  reporter;  and 
my  father  gave  me  notes  of  the  proceedings  in  the  House, 
so  that  I  could  make  a  fair  report  of  each  day's  facts 
which  we  so  early  abandoned  the  pretense  of  his  making. 
Every  privilege  and  courtesy  was  shown  the  press,  which 
sometimes  I  am  afraid  its  correspondents  accepted  un 
graciously.  Either  the  first  winter  or  the  next  one  of  them 
was  expelled  from  the  floor  of  the  House  for  his  over- 

132 


YEARS    OF    MY    YOUTH 

bold  criticisms  of  some  member,  and  I  espoused  his  cause 
with  quite  outrageous  zeal.  I  had,  indeed,  such  a  swollen 
ideal  of  the  rights  and  duties  of  the  press  that  I  spared  •» 
no  severity  in  my  censure  of  Senators  I  found  misguided. 
I  was,  perhaps,  not  wholly  fitted  by  my  nineteen  years 
to  judge  them,  though  this  possibility  did  not  occur  to 
me  at  the  time  with  its  present  force;  but  if  I  was  not 
impressed  with  the  dignity  of  the  Senate,  the  dignity  of  the 
Senate  Chamber  was  a  lasting  effect  with  me,  as,  in  fact, 
that  of  the  whole  Capitol  was.  I  seemed  to  share  person 
ally  in  it  as  I  mounted  the  stately  marble  stairway  from 
the  noble  rotunda  or  passed  through  the  ample  corridors 
from  the  Senate  to  the  House  where  it  needed  not  even 
a  nod  to  the  sergeant-at-arms  to  gain  me  access  to  the 
floor;  a  nonchalant  glance  was  enough.  But  the  grandeur  V 
of  the  interior,  which  I  enjoyed  with  the  whole  legislative 
body,  was  not  more  wonderful  than  its  climate,  which  I 
found  tempered  against  the  winter  to  a  summer  warmth 
by  the  air  rushing  from  the  furnaces  in  the  basement 
through  gratings  in  the  walls  and  floors.  These  were  for  ' 
me  the  earliest  word  of  the  comfort  that  now  pervades 
our  whole  well-warmed  American  world,  but  I  had  scarcely 
imagined  them  even  from  my  father's  report.  How  could 
I  imagine  them  or  fail  to  attribute  to  myself  something 
like  merit  from  them?  I  enjoyed,  in  fact,  something  like 
moral  or  civic  ownership  of  the  whole  place,  which  I 
penetrated  in  every  part  on  my  journalistic  business: 
the  court-rooms,  the  agricultural  department,  the  execu 
tive  offices,  and  how  do  I  know  but  the  very  room  of  the  ^\ 
Governor  himself?  The  library  was  of  course  my  personal 
resort;  as  I  have  told,  I  was  always  getting  books  from  it, 
and  these  books  had  a  quality  in  coming  from  the  State 
Library  which  intensified  my  sense  of  being  of,  as  well  as 
in,  the  capital  of  Ohio. 

Whether  the  city  itself  shared  my  sense  of  its  importance 

133 


YEARS    OF    MY    YOUTH 

in  the  same  measure  I  am  not  sure.  There  were  reasons, 
however,  why  it  might  have  done  so.  It  was  then  what 
would  be  now  a  small  city,  say  not  above  twenty  thousand, 
and  though  it  had  already  begun  to  busy  itself  with 
manufacturing  and  had  two  or  three  railroads  centering 
in  it,  the  industries  and  facilities  which  have  now  swollen 
its  population  to  almost  a  quarter  of  a  million  were  then 
in  their  beginning.  Its  political  consciousness  may  have 
been  the  greater,  therefore;  it  may  indeed  have  been 
subjectively  the  sovereign  city  which  I  so  objectively 
felt  it.  In  that  time,  in  fact,  a  state  capital  was  both 
comparatively  and  positively  of  greater  reality  than  it  has 
been  since.  With  the  Civil  War  carried  to  its  close  in  the 
reconstituted  Union,  the  theory  of  State  Rights  forever 
vanished,  and  with  this  the  dignity  which  once  clothed  the 
separate  existence  of  the  states.  Their  shadowy  sov 
ereignty  had  begun  to  wane  in  the  anti-slavery  North 
because  it  was  the  superstition  of  the  pro-slavery  South, 
yet  I  can  remember  a  moment  when  there  was  much  talk, 
though  it  never  came  to  more  than  talk,  of  turning  this 
superstition  to  a  faith  and  applying  it  to  the  defeat  of  the 
Fugitive  Slave  Law.  If  it  was  once  surmised  that  the 
decisions  of  the  Ohio  courts  might  nullify  a  law  of  the 
United  States  I  do  not  believe  that  this  surmise  ever 
increased  the  political  consciousness  of  our  state  capital. 
It  remained  a  steadily  prospering  town  like  other  towns, 
till  now  perhaps  it  may  not  feel  itself  a  capital  at  all. 
Perhaps  it  could  be  restored  to  something  like  the  quality 
I  valued  in  it  by  becoming  the  residence  of  envoys  from 
the  other  state  capitals,  and  sending  a  minister  to  each 
of  these.  I  have  the  conviction  that  public-spirited 
citizens  could  be  found  to  take  such  offices  at  very  mod 
erate  salaries,  and  that  their  wives  would  be  willing  to 
aid  in  restoring  the  shadow  of  state  sovereignty  by  leaving 

cards  upon  one  another. 

134 


YEARS    OF    MY    YOUTH 


in 

The  winter  of  1856-57  passed  without  my  knowing 
more  of  the  capital  than  its  official  world.  Even  the  next  /^ 
year,  when  I  began  to  make  some  acquaintance  with  the 
social  world,  it  was  with  an  alien  or  adoptive  phase  of  it, 
as  I  realize  with  tardy  surprise.  *  There  were  then  so 
many  Germans  in  Ohio  that  an  edition  of  the  laws  had 
to  be  printed  in  their  language,  and  there  was  a  common 
feeling  that  we  ought  to  know  their  language,  if  not 
their  literature,  which  was  really  what  I  cared  more  to 
know./  I  carried  my  knowledge  of  it  so  far  as  to  render  a 
poenf  of  my  own  into  German  verse  which  won  the  praise 
of  my  teacher ;  and  I  wish  I  could  remember  who  he  was, 
gentle,  tobacco-smoked  shade  that  he  has  long  since  be 
come,  or  who  the  German  editor  of  what  republikanische 
Zeitung  was  that  sometimes  shared  my  instruction  with 
him.  There  were  also  two  blithe  German  youths  who 
availed  with  me  in  the  loan  of  Goethe's  Wahlverwandschaft- 
en,  and  gave  me  some  fencing  lessons  in  their  noonings. 
I  forget  what  employ  they  were  of,  but  their  uncle  was  a 
watchmaker  and  jeweler,  and  my  father  got  him  to  gold- 
plate  his  silver  watch,  or  dye  it,  as  he  preferred  to  say. 
When  the  Civil  War  came  he  went  into  it  and  was  killed; 
and  many  years  afterward,  in  my  love  and  honor  of 
him,  I  turned  his  ghost  into  a  loved  and  honored  char 
acter  in  A  Hazard  of  New  Fortunes.  He  was  a  political 
refugee,  of  those  German  revolutionists  who  came  to  us 
after  the  revolts  of  1848,  and  he  still  dwells  venerable  in 
my  memory,  with  his  noble,  patriarchally  bearded  head. 

But  it  all  appears  very  fantastic  in  the  retrospect, 
that  Teutonic  period  of  my  self-culture,  and  I  am  not 
sure  that  one  fact  of  it  is  more  fantastic  than  another. 
Such  was  my  zeal  for  everything  German  that  I  once  \ 
lunched  at  one  of  the  German  beer-saloons  which  rather 
10  135 


YEARS   OF   MY    YOUTH 

abounded  in  Columbus,  on  Swiss  cheese  with  French 
mustard  spread  over  it  and  a  tall  glass  of  lager  beer, 
then  much  valued  as  a  possible  transition  from  the  use 
of  the  strong  waters  more  habitual  with  Americans  than 
now;  but  it  made  me  very  sick,  and  I  was  obliged  to 
forego  it  as  an  expression  of  my  love  for  German  poetry. 
To  a  little  earlier  period  must  have  belonged  the  incident 
of  my  going  to  see  "Die  Rduber"  of  Schiller,  which  I 
endured  with  iron  resolution  from  the  beginning  to  the 
end.  It  was  given,  I  believe,  by  amateurs,  and  I  tried 
my  best  to  imagine  that  I  understood  it  as  it  went  on, 
but  probably  I  did  not,  though  I  would  have  been  loath 
to  own  the  fact  to  any  of  the  few  German  families  who  then 
formed  my  whole  acquaintance  with  society.  I  never 
afterward  met  them  at  American  houses;  the  cleavage 
between  the  two  races  in  everything  but  politics  was 
absolute;  though  the  Germans  were  largely  anti-slavery, 
and  this  formed  common  ground  for  them  and  natives 
of  like  thinking  who  did  not  know  them  socially. 

In  those  first  winters  my  knowledge  of  American 
society  was  confined  to  the  generalized  hospitality  of 
the  large  evening  receptions  which  some  of  the  leading 
citizens  used  to  give  the  two  Houses  of  the  legislature, 
including  the  correspondents  and  reporters  attached  to 
them.  I  cannot  say  just  how  or  when  I  began  to  divine 
that  these  occasions  were  not  of  the  first  fashion, 'though 
the  hosts  and  hostesses  might  have  been  so.  There 
were  great  suppers,  mainly  of  oysters,  to  which  our  dis 
tance  from  the  sea  lent  distinction,  and  ice-cream,  and 
sometimes,  if  I  may  trust  a  faint  reverberation  from  the 
past  as  of  blown  corks,  champagne.  There  was  also  danc 
ing,  and  when  some  large,  old-fashioned  house  was  not 
large  enough,  a  wooden  pavilion  was  improvised  over  the 
garden  to  give  the  waltzes  and  quadrilles  verge  enough. 
I  recall  my  share  in  the  suppers,  if  not  in  the  dancing,  but 

136 


YEARS    OF    MY    YOUTH 

my  deficiency  was  far  more  than  made  up  by  the  excess 
of  a  friend,  who  must  then  have  been  hard  upon  sixty 
years  of  age,  yet  was  of  a  charming  gaiety  and  an  unim 
paired  youthfulness.  He  stood  up  in  every  quadrille,  and 
he  danced  to  the  end  of  the  evening,  with  a  demure  smile 
on  his  comely,  smooth-shaven,  rosy  face,  and  a  light, 
mocking  self-consciousness  in  his  kind  eyes,  as  if  he 
would  agree  as  to  any  incongruity  the  spectator  might 
find  in  his  performance.  He  was  one  of  the  clerks  of 
the  House,  an  old  politician,  and  the  editor  of  a  leading 
Cleveland  newspaper,  which  he  chose  to  leave  for  the 
pleasures  of  the  capital.  From  his  experience  of  the 
system  which  he  was  part  of  he  whimsically  professed 
to  believe  that  as  great  legislative  wisdom  could  be 
assembled  by  knocking  down  every  other  man  in  a 
crowd  and  dragging  him  into  the  House  or  Senate  as  by 
the  actual  method  of  nomination  and  election.  At  times 
he  would  support  the  theory  of  a  benevolent  despot 
ism,  and  advocate  the  establishment  of  what  he  called  a 
one-man  power  as  the  ideal  form  of  government.  I 
owed  him  much  in  the  discharge  of  duties  which  my  find 
ing  the  most  important  in  the  world  must  have  amused 
him,  and  when  he  went  back  to  his  newspaper  he  left  me 
to  write  the  legislative  letters  for  it. 

This  gentle  reactionary  was  the  antithesis  of  another 
very  interesting  man,  known  to  his  fellow-legislators  as 
Citizen  Corry,  in  recognition  of  his  preference  for  the  type 
of  French  Red  Republicanism  acquired  in  Paris  during 
his  stay  through  the  academic  republic  of  1848-50.  Such 
a  residence  would  alone  have  given  him  a  distinction 
which  we  can  hardly  realize  in  our  time,  but  he  was, 
besides,  a  man  of  great  natural  distinction,  and  of  more 
cultivation  than  any  of  his  fellow-legislators.  He  was 
one  of  the  Representatives  from  Cincinnati,  and  when 
another  Cincinnati  Representative  of  his  own  party 

13T 


YEARS    OF   MY   YOUTH 

struck  a  member  from  the  Western  Reserve,  Citizen  Corry 
joined  the  Republicans  in  voting  his  expulsion.  But  he 
had  already  made  a  greater  sensation,  and  created  an 
expectation  of  the  unexpected  in  all  he  did  by  proposing 
an  amendment  to  the  Constitution  abolishing  the  system 
of  dual  chambers  in  the  legislature,  and  retaining  only  the 
House  of  Representatives.  I  think  that  in  Greece  alone 
is  this  the  actual  parliamentary  form,  but  I  believe  that 
it  was  in  that  short-lived  French  republic  of  1848  that 
Corry  saw  its  workings  and  conceived  the  notion  of  its 
superiority.  Under  the  present  system  he  held  that  the 
House  was  merely  a  committee  at  the  bar  of  the  Senate, 
and  the  Senate  a  committee  at  the  bar  of  the  House,  with 
a  great  waste  of  time  and  public  advantage  through  the 
working  of  a  very  clumsy  machinery.  His  proposition 
was  not  taken  seriously  by  the  Ohio  House  of  Repre 
sentatives,  but  to  my  young  enthusiasm  it  seemed  con 
vincing  by  its  mere  statement,  and  the  arguments  on  the 
other  side,  to  the  effect  that  the  delays  which  he  censured 
gave  time  for  useful  reflection,  appeared  to  me  very 
fallacious.  Citizen  Corry  was  not  re-elected  to  the 
next  legislature,  and  his  somewhat  meteoric  history  did 
not  include  any  other  official  apparition.  But  while  he 
was  passing  through  the  orbit  of  my  world  I  was  fully 
aware  of  his  vivid  difference  from  the  controlled  and 
orderly  planets,  and  he  dazzled  in  me  an  imagination 
always  too  fondly  seeking  the  bizarre  and  strange.  I 
do  not  think  I  ever  spoke  with  him,  but  I  tingled  to  do  so ; 
I  created  him  citizen  of  that  fine  and  great  world  where 
I  had  so  much  of  my  own  being  in  reveries  that  rapt 
me  from  the  realities  of  the  life  about  me. 

IV 

The  first  winter  of  my  legislative  correspondence  began 
with  a  letter  to  ray  Cincinnati  newspaper  in  which  I  de- 

138 


YEARS    OF    MY    YOUTH 

scribed  the  public  opening  of  the  new  State  House.  I 
remember  the  event  vividly  because  I  thought  it  signally 
important,  and  partly  because,  to  relieve  myself  from  the 
stress  of  the  crowd  passing  through  the  doorways,  I  lifted 
my  arms  and  was  near  having  my  breath  crushed  out. 
There  were  a  ball  and  a  banquet,  but  somewhere,  some 
how,  amidst  the  dancing  and  the  feeding  and  smok 
ing,  I  found  a  corner  where  I  could  write  out  my  account 
of  the  affair  and  so  escaped  with  my  letter  and  my  life. 

Much  as  I  might  have  wished  to  share  socially,  with  such 
small  splendor  as  might  be,  in  this  high  occasion,  the 
reporter's  instinct  was  first  with  me.  I  was  there  as  the 
representative  of  a  great  Cincinnati  newspaper,  and  I 
cared  more  to  please  its  management  than  to  take  any 
such  part  as  I  might  in  the  festivity.  My  part  was  to 
look  on  and  tell  what  I  saw,  and  I  must  have  done  this 
in  the  manner  of  my  most  approved  good  masters,  no 
doubt  with  satirically  poetic  touches  from  Heine  and  bits 
of  worldly  glitter  from  Thackeray.  I  should  like  to  see 
that  letter  now,  and  I  should  like  to  know  how  I  con 
trived  to  get  it,  more  or  less  surreptitiously,  into  the 
hands  of  the  express  agent  for  delivery  to  my  newspaper. 
In  those  days  there  was  a  good  deal  of  talk,  foolish  talk, 
I  am  since  aware,  of  having  the  post-office  superseded  in 
its  functions  by  the  express  companies.  Now  the  talk  and 
the  fact  are  all  the  other  way;  but  then  the  mail  was 
slow  and  uncertain,  and  if  my  letter  was  of  the  nature  of 
manuscript  the  express  might  safely  carry  it  and  deliver 
it  in  time  for  the  next  day's  paper.  That  was  rightful 
and  lawful  enough,  but  there  was  a  show  of  secrecy  in  the 
transaction  which  was  not  unpleasing  to  the  enterprise 
of  a  young  reporter. 

My  letters,  as  they  went  on  from  day  to  day,  contented 
the  managers  of  the  Gazette  so  well  that  when  the  session 
of  the  legislature  ended  they  gave  me  an  invitation  which 

139 


YEARS    OF   MY   YOUTH 

might  well  have  abused  my  modesty  with  a  sense  of  merit. 
This  invitation  was  to  come  and  be  their  city  editor,  which 
then  meant  the  local  reporting,  at  a  salary  twice  as  great 
as  that  which  I  had  been  getting  as  their  legislative  corre 
spondent.  I  do  not  know  whose  inspiration  the  offer 
was,  but  I  should  like  to  believe  it  was  that  of  the  envoy 
from  the  paper  who  made  it  in  person,  after  perhaps 
more  fully  satisfying  himself  of  my  fitness.  He  is  long 
since  dead,  but  if  he  were  still  alive  I  hope  he  would 
not  mind  my  describing  him  as  of  less  stature  than 
myself  even,  wearing  the  large,  round  glasses  which 
give  certain  near-sighted  persons  a  staring  look,  and  of 
speech  low  almost  to  whispering,  so  that  I  could  not 
quite  be  sure  that  the  incredible  thing  he  was  proposing 
was  really  expressed  to  me.  I  like  to  recall  the  personal 
fact  of  him  because  he  was  always  my  friend,  and  he 
would  have  found  me  another  place  on  the  paper  if  he 
could  when  I  would  not  take  the  one  he  had  offered.  He 
did  make  room  for  me  in  his  own  department  for  as  long 
as  he  could,  or  as  I  would  stay,  when  I  went  down  to 
Cincinnati  to  look  the  ground  over,  and  he  kept  me  his 
guest  as  far  as  sharing  his  room  with  me  in  the  building 
where  we  worked  together,  and  where  I  used  to  grope 
my  way  toward  midnight  up  a  stairway  entirely  black  to 
his  door.  There  I  lighted  the  candle-end  which  I  found 
within  and  did  what  I  could  to  sleep  till  he  came,  hours 
later,  when  the  paper  went  to  press.  I  have  the  belief 
that  the  place  was  never  swept  or  dusted,  and  that  this 
did  not  matter  to  the  quiet,  scholarly  man  whose  life 
was  so  wholly  in  his  work  that  he  did  not  care  how  he 
lived. 

He  was  buoyed  up,  above  all  other  things,  by  the 
interest^of  journalism,  which  for  those  once  abandoned  to 
it  is  indeed  a  kind  of  enchantment.  As  I  knew  it  then 
and  afterward,  it  has  always  had  far  more  of  my  honor 

140 


YEARS    OF    MY    YOUTH 

and  respect  than  those  ignorant  of  it  know  how  to  render. 
One  incident  of  it  at  this  time  so  especially  moved  me 
that  I  will  give  it  place  in  this  wayward  tale,  though 
it  is  probably  not  more  to  the  credit  of  the  press  than 
unnumbered  others  which  others  could  cite.  A  miserable 
man  came  late  one  night  to  ask  that  a  certain  report 
which  involved  his  good  name,  and  with  it  the  good  name 
of  a  miserable  woman,  and  the  peace  of  their  families, 
might  be  withheld.  He  came  with  legal  counsel,  and 
together  they  threshed  the  matter  out  with  our  editorial 
force  upon  the  point  whether  we  ought  or  ought  not  to 
spare  him,  our  contention  being  that  as  a  prominent 
citizen  he  was  even  less  to  be  spared  than  a  more  unim 
portant  person.  Our  professional  conscience  was  ap 
parently  in  that  scruple;  how  it  was  overcome  I  do  not 
remember,  but  at  last  we  promised  mercy  and  the  report 
was  suppressed. 

It  was  one  of  the  ironies  of  life  that  after  the  only  sus 
pected  avenue  to  publicity  had  been  successfully  guarded, 
the  whole  fact  should  have  cruelly  come  out  in  another 
paper  the  next  morning.  But  I  cannot  feel  even  yet  that 
the  beauty  of  our  merciful  decision  was  marred  by  this 
mockery  of  fate,  or  that  the  cause  of  virtue  was  served 
by  it,  and  I  think  that  if  I  had  been  wiser  than  I  was  then 
I  would  have  remained  in  the  employ  offered  me,  and 
learned  in  the  school  of  reality  the  many  lessons  of  human 
nature  which  it  could  have  taught  me.  I  did  not  remain, 
and  perhaps  I  could  not;  it  might  have  been  the  necessity 
of  my  morbid  nerves  to  save  themselves  from  abhorrent 
contacts;  in  any  case,  I  renounced  the  opportunity 
offered  me  by  that  university  of  the  streets  and  police- 
stations,  with  its  faculty  of  patrolmen  and  ward  politi 
cians  and  saloon-keepers.  The  newspaper  office  was 
not  the  Capitol  of  Ohio;  I  was  not  by  the  fondest  impu 
tation  a  part  of  the  state  government,  and  I  felt  the  dif- 

141 


YEARS    OF    MY    YOUTH 

ference  keenly.  I  was  always  very  homesick;  I  knew  no 
body  in  the  city,  and  I  had  no  companionship  except 
that  of  my  constant  friend,  whom  I  saw  only  in  our  hours 
of  work.  I  had  not  even  the  poor  social  refuge  of  a 
boarding-house;  I  ate  alone  at  a  restaurant,  where  I  used 
sadly  to  amuse  myself  with  the  waiters'  versions  of  the 
orders  which  they  called  down  a  tube  into  the  kitchen 
below.  The  one  which  cheered  me  most  was  that  of  a' 
customer  who  always  ordered  a  double  portion  of  corn- 
cakes  and  was  translated  as  requiring  "Indians,  six  on  a 
plate." 

Nearly  all  the  frequenters  of  this  restaurant  were  men 
from  their  stores  and  offices,  snatching  a  hasty  midday 
meal,  but  a  few  were  women,  clerks  and  shop-girls  of 
the  sort  who  now  so  abound  in  our  towns  and  cities,  but 
then  so  little  known.  I  was  so  altogether  ignorant  of  life 
that  I  thought  shame  of  them  to  be  boldly  showing  them 
selves  in  such  a  public  place  as  a  restaurant.  I  wonder 
what  they  would  have  thought,  poor,  blameless  dears, 
of  the  misgivings  in  the  soul  of  the  conscious  youth  as 
he  sat  stealing  glances  of  injurious  conjecture  at  them 
while  he  overate  himself  with  the  food  which  was  the 
only  thing  that  could  appease  for  a  moment  the  hunger 
of  his  homesick  heart.  If  I  could  not  mercifully  imagine 
them,  how  could  I  intelligently  endure  the  ravings  of  the 
drunken  woman  which  I  heard  one  night  in  the  police- 
station  where  my  abhorred  duties  took  me  for  the  detesta 
ble  news  of  the  place?  I  suppose  it  was  this  adventure, 
sole  of  its  sort,  which  clinched  my  resolve  to  have  no  more 
to  do  with  the  money-chance  offered  to  me  in  journalism. 
My  longing  was  for  the  cleanly  respectabilities,  and  I 
still  cannot  think  that  a  bad  thing,  or  if  experience 
cannot  have  more  than  the  goodly  outside  in  life,  that  this 
is  not  well  worth  having.  There  was  a  relief,  almost  an 

atonement,  or  at  least  a  consolation  in  being  sent  next 

142 


YEARS    OF    MY    YOUTH 

day  to  report  a  sermon,  in  fulfilment  of  my  friend's  ideal 
of  journalistic  enterprise,  and  though  that  sermon  has 
long  since  gone  from  me  and  was  perhaps  at  the  time  not 
distinctly  with  me,  still  I  have  a  sense  of  cleansing  from 
the  squalor  of  the  station-house  in  listening  to  it.  If 
all  my  work  could  have  been  the  reporting  of  sermons, 
with  intervals  of  sketching  the  graduating  ceremonies  of 
young  ladies'  seminaries,  such  as  that  where  once  a  girl  in 
garnet  silk  read  an  essay  of  perhaps  no  surpassing  interest, 
but  remained  an  enchanting  vision,  and  the  material  of 
some  future  study  in  fiction;  if  it  could  have  been  these 
things,  with  nothing  of  police-stations  in  it,  I  might 
have  tried  longer  to  become  a  city  editor.  But  as  it 
was  I  decided  my  destiny  in  life  differently. 


I  must  not  conceal  the  disappointment  which  my  father 
delicately  concealed  when  I  returned  and  took  up  my 
old  work  in  the  printing-office.  He  might  well  have 
counted  on  my  help  in  easing  him  of  his  load  of  debt, 
from  the  salary  I  had  forgone,  but  there  was  no  hint  of 
this  in  the  welcome  given  me  in  the  home  where  I  was 
again  so  doubly  at  home  with  my  books  and  manuscripts. 
Now  and  then  my  friend  of  the  Gazette  management 
managed  to  have  some  sketch  of  mine  accepted  for  it, 
and  my  life  went  on  in  my  sister's  literary  companionship 
on  much  the  same  terms  as  before  our  venture  into  the 
world  the  winter  before.  My  father's  clerkship  had 
ended  with  the  adjournment  of  the  legislature  in  the 
spring,  but  in  the  autumn,  when  it  grew  toward  winter, 
I  asked  again  for  the  correspondence  of  the  Gazette.  I 
got  this  by  favor  of  my  friend,  and  then  I  had  courage  to 
ask  for  that  of  the  Cleveland  Herald,  which  the  interest 
of  the  blithe  sexagenarian  sufficed  to  secure  me,  and  I 

143 


YEARS    OF    MY    YOUTH 

returned  to  the  capital  with  no  pretense  that  I  was  not 
now  writing  the  letters  solely  and  entirely  myself.  But 
almost  before  my  labors  began  my  health  quite  broke 
under  the  strain  of  earlier  over-study  and  later  over 
work.  I  gave  up  my  correspondence  for  both  those 
honored  newspapers  to  my  father,  who  wrote  it  till  the 
close  of  the  session,  and  at  his  suggestion  the  letters  of  the 
Gazette  fell  the  next  winter  to  the  fit  and  eager  hands  of 
a  young  man  who  had  just  then  sold  his  country  newspaper 
and  had  come  to  try  his  fortune  in  the  capital.  His  name 
was  Whitelaw  Reid,  in  the  retrospect  a  tall,  graceful 
youth  with  an  enviable  black  mustache  and  imperial, 
wearing  his  hair  long  in  the  Southern  fashion,  and  carry 
ing  himself  with  the  native  ease  which  availed  him  in  a 
worldly  progress  uninterrupted  to  the  end.  He  wrote  the 
legislative  letters  so  acceptably  that  when  the  Civil  War 
broke  out  the  Gazette  people  were  glad  to  make  him  their 
correspondent  in  the  field,  where  he  distinguished  himself 
beyond  any  other  war  correspondent  in  the  West,  or  the 
East  for  what  I  knew.  The  world  knows  how  riches 
and  honors  followed  him  all  his  days,  and  how  when  he 
died  the  greatest  Empire  sent  his  dust  home  to  the 
greatest  Republic  in  such  a  war-ship  as  the  war  corre 
spondent  of  those  years  could  not  have  dreamed  of.  From 
time  to  time  we  saw  each  other,  but  not  often;  he  was 
about  his  business  in  the  State  House,  and  now  I  was 
about  mine  in  the  office  of  the  Ohio  State  Journal,  the 
organ  of  the  Republican  party,  which  had  been  newly 
financed  and  placed  on  a  firm  footing  after  rather  pro 
longed  pecuniary  debility. 

I  was  at  home  in  the  autumn,  as  I  had  been  all  the 
summer,  eating  my  heart  out  (as  I  would  have  said  in 
those  days)  when  the  call  to  a  place  on  the  Journal's 
editorial  staff  incredibly,  impossibly  came,  and  I  forgot 

my  ills,  and  eagerly  responded.     I  hardly  know  how  to 

144 


YEARS    OF   MY    YOUTH 

justify  my  inconsistency  when  I  explain  that  this  place 
was  the  same  which  I  had  rejected  at  twice  the  salary  on 
the  Cincinnati  Gazette.  Perhaps  I  accepted  it  now  because 
I  could  no  longer  endure  the  disappointment  and  inaction 
of  my  life.  Perhaps  I  hoped  that  in  the  smaller  city  the 
duties  would  not  be  so  odious  or  so  onerous;  perhaps  it 
was  because  I  would  have  been  glad  to  return  to  Columbus 
on  any  terms;  in  any  case  it  fell  out  that  the  duties  of  the 
place  were  undertaken  by  another  who  doted  on  them, 
and  quite  different  and  far  more  congenial  functions 
were  assigned  to  me. 

My  chief  was  Henry  D.  Cooke,  the  successful  editor 
and  proprietor  of  a  newspaper  in  northern  Ohio,  and 
brother  of  the  banker  Jay  Cooke,  once  nationally  noted 
in  our  finance  and  himself  afterward  Governor  of  the 
District  of  Columbia,  the  easiest  of  easy  gentlemen, 
formed  for  prosperity  and  leisure,  with  an  instinct  for 
the  choice  of  subordinates  qualified  to  do  the  journalistic 
work  he  soon  began  to  relinquish  in  his  preoccupation 
with  the  politics  of  the  capital.  I  have  had  no  sweeter 
friend  in  a  life  abounding  in  friends,  and  after  fifty  years 
I  think  of  his  memory  with  gratitude  for  counsels  which 
availed  me  much  when  given  and  would  avail  me  still  if  I 
should  ever  again  be  a  youth  of  twenty-one,  proposing  to 
do  and  say  the  things  I  then  proposed.  He  rarely  blamed 
anything  I  did  in  the  stirring  and  distracted  period  of  our 
relation,  but  one  morning  he  brought  me  a  too  graphic 
paragraph,  about  a  long-forgotten  homicide  done  by  an 
injured  husband,  and  said,  "Never,  never  write  anything 
you  would  be  ashamed  i>6  read  to  a  woman,"  and  so 
made  me  lastingly  ashamed  of  what  I  had  done,  and 
fearful  of  ever  doing  the  like  again,  even  in  writing  fiction. 
It  seems  not  to  be  so  now  with  our  novelists,  begun  or 
beginning;  they  write  many  things  they  ought  to  be 
ashamed  to  read  to  women,  or  if  they  are  of  that  sex, 

145 


YEARS    OF    MY    YOUTH 

things  they  should  be  ashamed  to  read  to  men.  But 
perhaps  they  are  ashamed  and  only  hold  out  writing 
so  for  art's  sake;  I  cannot  very  well  speak  for  them; 
but  I  am  still  very  Victorian  in  my  preference  of 
decency.  / 

Mr.  Cooke  must  have  been  often  of  a  divided  mind 
about  his  assistants,  or  about  their  expression  of  the 
opinions  which  he  reticently  held  in  common  with  them. 
He  was  a  thorough  Republican;  he  undoubtedly  believed 
that  the  time  had  come  for  calling  black  black,  but  his 
nature  would  have  been  to  call  it  dark  gray,  at  least  for 
that  day  or  for  the  next.  He  would  have  oftenest  agreed 
with  us  in  what  we  said  of  the  pro-slavery  party  and 
partisans,  North  and  South,  though  he  held  it  not  honesty 
to  have  it  thus  set  down.  He  would  have  liked  better 
the  milde  Macht  of  a  Hahnemannian  treatment,  while 
we  were  blistering  and  cauterizing,  and  letting  blood 
wherever  we  saw  the  chance,  and  there  were  every  day 
chances  enough.  I  had  been  made  news  editor,  and  in 
the  frequent  intervals  of  our  chiefs  abeyance  I  made 
myself  the  lieutenant  of  the  keen  ironical  spirit  who 
mostly  wrote  our  leaders,  but  did  not  mind  my  dipping 
my  pen  in  his  ink  when  I  could  turn  from  the  paste  and 
scissors  which  were  more  strictly  my  means  of  expression. 
My  work  was  to  look  through  the  exchange  newspapers 
which  flocked  to  us  in  every  mail,  and  to  choose  from 
them  any  facts  that  could  be  presented  to  our  readers  as 
significant.  I  called  my  column  or  two  "News  and 
Humors  of  the  Mail,"  and  I  tried  to  give  it  an  effect 
of  originality  by  recasting  many  of  the  facts,  or,  when  I 
could  not  find  a  pretext  for  this,  by  offering  the  selected 
passages  with  applausive  or  derisive  comment.  We  had 
French  and  Spanish  and  German  exchanges,  and  I  some 
times  indulged  a  boyish  vanity  by  prefacing  a  paragraph 
from  these  with  such  a  sentence  as,  "We  translate  from  the 

146 


YEARS    OF    MY    YOUTH 

Courrier  des  Etats  Unis"  or,  "We  find  in  La  Cronaca  of 
New  York,"  or  "We  learn  from  the  Wachter  am  Erie"  as 
the  case  might  be.  Why  I  should  have  been  suffered  to 
\/do  this  without  admonition  from  our  chief  or  sarcasm 
>  from  my  senior  I  do  not  know;  perhaps  the  one  thought 
it  best  to  let  youth  have  its  head  when  the  head  was  harm 
lessly  turned;  and  perhaps  the  other  was  too  much  oc 
cupied  with  his  own  work  to  trouble  himself  with  mine; 
but  certainly  if  I  had  caught  a  contemporary  in  such  folly 
I  should  have  tried  what  unsparing  burlesque  could  do  to 
make  him  wiser. 

The  reader  who  has  no  follies  to  own  will  probably 
not  think  me  wise  in  owning  mine,  but  from  time  to  time 
I  must  do  so ;  there  were  so  many.  It  is  with  no  hope  of 
repairing  these  follies  now  that  I  confess  the  pride  I  felt  in 
the  poor  little  Spanish,  German,  and  French  which  it  had 
cost  me  so  much  to  acquire  unaided  and  unguided,  and 
I  was  willing  that  my  acquirements  should  shed  luster 
on  the  newspaper  I  loved  almost  as  much  as  I  loved 
myself.  I  admired  it  even  more,  and  I  wished  to  do  all 
that  I  could  to  make  it  admirable,  even  enviable,  with 
others.  I  think  now  that  I  was  not  using  one  of  the 
best  means  to  do  it;  I  only  contend  that  it  was  one  of  the 
best  I  could  think  of  then.  If  any  contemporary  had 
turned  it  against  us,  I  hope  I  should  have  been  willing 
to  suffer  personally  for  it,  but  I  cannot  now  be  sure. 


VI 

We  aspired  at  least  tacitly  to  a  metropolitan  character 
in  our  journalism;  there  were  no  topics  of  human  interest 
which  we  counted  alien  to  us  anywhere  in  the  range  of 
politics,  morals,  literature,  or  religion;  and  I  was  suf 
fered  my  say.  The  writer  who  was  more  habitually  and 

147 


YEARS    OF   MY    YOUTH 

profitably  suffered  his  say  was,  I  still  think,  a  man 
of  very  uncommon  qualities  and  abilities.  He  was 
a  journalist  who  could  rightly  be  called  a  publicist, 
earnest  if  things  came  to  that,  of  a  faithful  conscience 
and  of  a  mocking  skill  in  the  chances  pretty  constantly 
furnished  us  by  our  contemporaries,  especially  some  of  our 
Southern  contemporaries  whom  it  was  difficult  to  take  as 
seriously  as  they  took  themselves.  When  they  made 
some  violent  proclamation  against  the  North,  or  wreaked 
themselves  in  some  frenzy  of  pro-slavery  ethics,  we  took 
our  pleasure  in  shredding  the  text  into  small  passages 
and  tagging  each  of  these  with  a  note  of  open  derision 
or  ironical  deprecation.  We  called  it  "  firing  the  Southern 
heart,"  in  a  phrase  much  used  at  the  time.  It  was  not 
wise,  it  was  not  well,  but  it  was  undeniably  amusing, 
and  we  carried  it  to  any  lengths  that  the  very  intermittent 
supervision  of  our  nominal  chief  would  allow.  We  may 
have  supposed  that  it  would  help  laugh  away  the  madness 
of  the  South  which  few  in  the  North  believed  more  than 
a  temporary  insanity,  but  the  uneasy  honesty  which 
always  lurks  somewhere  in  my  heart  to  make  me  own 
my  errors  must  acquit  my  fellow-editor  of  the  worst 
excesses  in  this  sort,  so  mainly  literary  with  me.  He 
was  not  only  a  man  of  high  journalistic  quality,  of  clear 
insight,  shrewd  judgment,  and  sincere  convictions,  but 
I  do  not  believe  that  in  the  American  press  of  the  time 
he  was  surpassed  as  a  clear  thinker  and  brilliant  writer. 
All  the  days  of  journalism  are  yesterdays;  and  the  name 
of  Samuel  R.  Reed  will  mean  nothing  to  these  oblivious 
morrows,  even  in  Ohio,  but  all  the  more  I  wish  to  do  his 
memory  such  honor  as  I  may.  We  were  of  course  daily 
together  in  our  work,  and  often  in  our  walks  on  the 
Sundays  which  were  as  other  days  to  his  steadfast  ag 
nosticism.  The  word  was  not  yet,  but  the  thing  has 

always  been,  and  especially  it  always  was  in  the  older 

148 


YEARS    OF    MY    YOUTH 

West,  where  bold  surmise  of  the  whence  and  whither 
of  life  often  defied  the  authorit}^  of  Faith,  then  much 
more  imperative  than  now.  Reed's  favorite  author, 
whom  he  read  as  critically  as  if  he  were  not  his  favor 
ite,  was  Shakespeare;  but  his  far  more  constant  read 
ing  was  the  Bible,  especially  the  Old  Testament.  I 
could  not  say  why  he  read  it  so  much,  but  he  may  have 
felt  in  it  the  mystical  power  which  commands  the  imagina 
tion  of  men  and  holds  them  in  respectful  contemplation 
of  a  self-sufficing  theory  of  the  universe  such  as  nothing 
in  science  or  philosophy  affords.  He  quoted  it  for  a 
peculiar  joy  in  the  fitness  of  its  application  to  every 
circumstance;  he  quoted  Dickens,  as  everybody  did 
then;  he  quoted  Shakespeare  a  great  deal  more  both  in 
his  talking  and  in  his  writing;  and  later  in  his  life,  long 
after  mine  had  parted  from  it,  he  amused  the  spare  mo 
ments  of  his  journalistic  leisure  by  a  study  of  Shake 
speare's  women  whom  he  did  not  take  at  the  generally 
accepted  critical  appraisement. 

I  am  tempted  out  of  the  order  of  these  confessions  to 
follow  him  to  the  end  which  death  put  to  the  long  kindness 
between  us,  and  I  recall  with  tenderness  our  last  meeting 
near  New  York  where  he  was  hesitating  whether  to  con 
tinue  on  his  way  to  Europe.  He  had  at  last  given  up 
his  work  in  Cincinnati  where  he  had  spent  the  many 
years  after  the  few  years  we  spent  together  in  Columbus. 
He  owned  that  he  had  worn  himself  out  in  that  work, 
toiling  incessantly  through  many  homicidal  Cincinnati 
summers,  and  he  blamed  himself  for  the  sacrifice.  He 
felt  that  he  had  turned  from  it  too  late;  and  in  fact 
he  died  at  sea  soon  after.  He  accepted  his  impending 
doom  with  the  stoical  calm  which  he  always  kept,  and 
which  I  had  once  seen  him  keep  so  wonderfully  after  the 
war  began,  when  a  Southern  Unionist,  the  formerly 

famous,  now  forgotten  Parson  Brownlow  of  Tennessee, 

149 


\ 


YEARS    OF   MY    YOUTH 

came  to  reproach  him  for  the  part  which  he  held  that 
such  writing  as  Reed's  had  borne  in  bringing  on  the  strife. 
Reed  suffered  the  good  man's  passion  almost  with  compas 
sion,  and  when  Brownlow  was  gone  he  would  not  let  me 
blame  him,  but  said  that  he  had  played  a  noble  part  in 
the  struggle  to  hold  his  region  in  the  Union.  He  always 
kept  a  countenance  of  bland  calm,  lit  by  pale-blue  eyes 
which  gave  no  hint  of  the  feeling  within,  and  if  I  had 
not  loved  him  so  much  and  known  him  so  well  I  might 
have  thought  the  habitual  smile  of  his  clean-shaven  lip 
sometimes  a  little  cruel.  He  let  his  full  soft  beard  grow 
inordinately  long,  and  he  had  a  way  of  stroking  it  as  he 
slightly  smiled  and  crisply  spoke;  it  was  the  only  touch 
of  quaintness  in  him  at  a  time  when  beards  were  self- 
indulgently  worn  in  many  fantastic  ways.  He  was  the 
best-dressed  man  I  knew,  in  fashions  as  little  aged  as 
possible  in  their  transition  from  the  East  to  the  West, 
and  he  was  of  a  carefulness  in  such  minor  morals  as 
gloves  and  boots  very  uncommon  in  our  somewhat 
slovenly  ways. 

After  his  liking  for  Shakespeare  and  Dickens  he  liked 
the  Ingoldsby  Legends,  but  he  did  not  care  for  the  poetry 
which  I  was  constantly  reading  and  trying  to  write. 
The  effect  of  my  endeavor  as  it  appeared  in  the  passionate 
or  pessimistic  verse  which  I  contributed  to  Eastern 
periodicals  must  have  amused  him;  but  perhaps  he 
tolerated  me  because,  along  with  this  poetical  effusiveness 
in  which  I  was  grievously  sensitive  to  any  breath  of  sar 
casm,  I  had  a  tooth  as  sharp  as  his  own  in  our  journalism. 
He  was  intelligently  and  I  suppose  scientifically  fond  of 
music,  since  he  failed  of  no  chance  to  hear  the  best,  a 
chance  rare  in  our  city;  and  he  held  that  the  composition 
of  grand  opera  was  the  highest  feat  of  the  human  intel 
lect,  which  was  to  me  a  stumbling-block  and  foolishness, 

though  I  liked  dramatic  singing,  and  indeed  singing  of 

150 


YEARS    OF    MY    YOUTH 

all  kinds.  We  came  together  in  our  fondness  for  the 
theater,  and  after  our  evening's  work  was  done  he  some 
times  turned  with  me  into  the  barnlike  structure  on 
State  Street  which  served  the  pathetic  need  of  the  drama 
in  Columbus  at  that  day.  The  place  was  heated  in  the 
winter  for  its  twenty  or  thirty  frequenters  by  two  huge 
cast-iron  stoves,  one  on  either  side  of  the  orchestra: 
stoves  such  as  I  have  since  seen  in  English  cathedrals; 
but  when  the  curtain  rose  the  blast  of  freezing  air  that 
swept  out  upon  us  made  us  shiver  for  the  players  in  their 
bare  arms  and  necks  and  their  thin  hosiery  and  drapery. 
They  were  often  such  bad  players  that  they  merited  their 
sufferings;  the  prompter  audibly  bore  a  very  leading  part 
in  the  performance  as  he  still  does  in  the  Italian  theater; 
yet  for  all  his  efforts  we  one  night  saw  Hamlet  in  two  acts; 
it  was,  to  be  sure,  a  very  cold  night,  of  an  air  eagerer  and 
nippinger  than  even  that  the  ghost  walked  in  at  Elsinore, 
and  we  would  not  have  had  the  play  longer.  Yet  we 
often  saw  very  well  given  some  of  the  old  English  comedies 
which  are  now  no  longer  well  or  ill  given;  and  between 
the  acts,  somewhere,  a  plain  young  girl,  in  a  modest 
modicum  of  stocking,  represented  the  ballet  by  dancing 
the  Highland  Fling,  always  the  Highland  Fling.  Such 
plays  as  "The  Lady  of  Lyons"  happened  now  and  then, 
and  "The  Daughter  of  the  Regiment"  must  have  been, 
at  least  partly,  sung.  We  did  not  lack  the  more  darkling 
melodrama,  and  there  were  heroic  pieces  which  gave  the 
leading  actor  opportunities  not  lost  upon  him,  however 
they  failed  of  effect  with  the  rest  of  the  cast.  I  remember 
how  one  night  a  robustuous  periwig-pated  fellow  ramped 
and  roared  up  and  down  the  stage,  but  left  quite  cold  a 
large  group  of  the  dramatis  personce  which  his  magnilo 
quence  was  intended  to  convulse  with  either  sympathy  or 
antipathy;  and  how  Reed  noted  with  mock-thoughtful 
recognition  of  the  situation,  "Can't  excite  those  fellows 
ii  151 


YEARS    OF    MY    YOUTH 

off  to  the  left,  any."     I  should  not  be  able  to  say  how 
killingly  droll  I  found  this. 


VII 

I  suppose  that  every  young  man  presently  attempting 
journalism  feels  something  of  the  pride  and  joy  I  felt 
when  I  began  it;  though  pride  and  joy  are  weak  words 
for  the  passion  I  had  for  the  work.  If  my  soul  was  more 
in  my  verse,  I  did  not  know  it,  and  I  am  sure  my  heart 
was  as  much  in  my  more  constant  labors.  I  could  find 
time  for  poetry  only  in  my  brief  noonings,  and  at  night 
after  the  last  proofs  had  gone  to  the  composing-room, 
or  I  had  come  home  from  the  theater  or  from  an  eve 
ning  party,  but  the  long  day  was  a  long  delight  to  me 
over  my  desk  in  the  room  next  my  senior.  To  come 
upon  some  inviting  fact,  or  some  flattering  chance  for 
mischief  in  an  exchange,  above  all  a  Northern  con 
temporary  with  Southern  principles,  and  to  take  this  to 
him  and  talk  it  or  laugh  it  over  and  leave  it  with  him, 
or  bring  it  back  and  exploit  it  myself,  was  something  that 
made  every  day  a  heyday.  We  shunned  personalities, 
then  the  stock  in  trade  of  most  newspaper  wits;  we 
meant  to  deal  only  with  the  public  character  of  men  and 
things.  It  seems  to  have  been  all  pleasure  as  I  tell  it, 
but  there  was  a  great  deal  of  duty  in  it,  too;  though  if 
burlesquing  the  opposite  opinions  of  our  contemporaries 
happened  to  be  a  duty,  so  much  the  better.  If  it  were 
to  do  again,  I  should  not  do  it,  or  not  so  much;  but 
at  the  time  I  cannot  deny  that  I  liked  doing  it.  So, 
too,  I  liked  to  write  cutting  criticisms  of  the  books 
which  it  was  part  of  my  work  to  review;  and  I  still 
hope  to  be  forgiven  by  the  kindness  which  I  sinned 
against  without  winning  the  authority  as  reviewer  which 

I  aimed  at. 

152 


YEARS    OF    MY    YOUTH 

I  had  much  better  been  at  the  theater  than  writing 
some  of  the  things  I  then  wrote.  But  it  may  as  well 
be  owned  here  as  anywhere  that  whatever  might  have 
been  its  value  to  me  as  a  school  of  morals  the  theater 
was  not  good  society  in  Columbus  then;  and  I  was  now 
in  a  way  of  being  good  society,  and  had  been  so  for  some 
time.  The  rehabilitation  of  our  newspaper  was  coincident 
with  the  rise  of  the  Republican  party  to  the  power  which 
it  held  almost  unbroken  for  fifty  years.  It  had  of  course 
lost  the  Presidential  election  in  1856,  but  its  defeat  left  it 

\  in  better  case  than  an  untimely  victory  might  have  done. 
Ohio  had,  at  any  rate,  a  Republican  Governor  in  a  man 
afterward  of  a  prime  national  importance,  and  already 
known  as  a  statesman-like  politician  well  fitted  by  capacity 
and  experience  for  that  highest  office  which  never  ceased 
to  be  his  aim  while  he  lived.  Salmon  P.  Chase  had  been 
a  lawyer  of  the  first  standing  in  Cincinnati,  where,  al 
though  a  Democrat,  he  had  early  distinguished  himself 
by  his  services  in  behalf  of  friendless  negroes.  The 
revolt  of  the  whole  self-respecting  North  against  the  repeal 
of  the  Missouri  Compromise  swept  him  finally  out  of 
the  Democracy  into  that  provisional  organization  which 
loosely  knew  itself  as  the  Anti-Nebraska  party;  but 
before  he  was  chosen  Governor  by  it  he  had  already 
served  a  term  in  the  United  States  Senate,  where 
with  one  other  Freesoiler  he  held  the  balance  of  power 
in  an  otherwise  evenly  divided  body.  He  was  a  large, 
handsome  man,  of  a  very  senatorial  presence,  and 

\now  in  the  full  possession  of  his  uncommon  powers;  a 
man  of  wealth  and  breeding,  educated  perhaps  beyond 

I  any  of  the  other  Presidential  aspirants  except  Seward, 
versed  in  the  world,  and  accustomed  to  ease  and  state; 
and  he  gave  more  dignity  to  his  office,  privately  and 
publicly,  than  it  had  yet  known  among  us.  He  lived 
in  a  pretty  house  of  the  Gothic  make  then  much 

m 


o 


YEARS    OF    MY    YOUTH 

affected  by  our  too  eclectic  architecture,  with  his  brilliant 
young  daughter  at  the  head  of  it;  for  the  Governor  was 
a  widower. 

He  was  naturally  much  interested  in  the  new  control 
of  the  Republican  organ,  and  it  would  not  be  strange  if  he 
had  taken  some  active  part  in  its  rehabilitation,  but  I 
do  not  know  that  he  had.  At  any  rate,  he  promptly  made 
the  editorial  force  welcome  to  his  house,  where  Reed 
and  I  were  asked  to  Thanksgiving  dinner;  Mr.  Cooke 
had  not  yet  brought  his  family  to  Columbus.  Thanks 
giving  was  not  then  observed  on  the  present  national 
terms;  it  was  still  the  peculiar  festival  of  New  England, 
and  in  our  capital  its  recognition  was  confined  to  families 
of  New  England  origin;  our  Kentuckians  and  Virginians 
and  Marylanders  kept  Christmas,  though  the  custom  of 
New- Year's  calls  was  domesticated  among  us  with  people 
of  all  derivations,  and  in  due  time  suffered  the  lapse 
which  it  fell  into  in  its  native  New  York.  Our  Governor 
was  born  in  New  Hampshire,  where  his  family  name  was 
already  distinguished  in  public  life;  and  he  kept  the 
Thanksgiving  which  he  had  probably  not  officially  in 
vited  his  fellow-citizens  to  commemorate.  I  suppose  we 
had  turkey  for  our  dinner,  but  I  am  surer  of  the  manner 
than  the  make  of  the  feast,  for  it  was  served  with  a  for 
mality  new  to  my  unworldly  experience.  The  turkey 
was  set  before  the  governor  who  carved  it,  and  then  it 
was  brought  to  the  guests  by  a  shining  black  butler,  in 
stead  of  being  passed  from  hand  to  hand  among  them, 
as  I  had  always  seen  it  done.  That  was,  in  fact,  my 
first  dinner  in  society. 

The  young  editors  were  the  only  guests;  and  after 
dinner  the  family  did  not  forbid  itself  the  gaieties  befitting 
its  young  people's  years.  We  had  charades,  then  much 
affected  in  society,  and  I  believe  the  Governor  alone  was 

not  pressed  into  helping  dramatize  the  riddle  to  be  finally 

154 


YEARS    OF   MY   YOUTH 

guessed  as  Canterbury  Bell.  I  do  not  remember  how  the 
secret  was  kept  to  the  end,  or  guessed  from  the  successive 
parts.  My  fear  and  pride  were  put  to  a  crucial  test  in  the 
first  dissyllable,  which  the  girlish  hostess  assigned  me, 
and  nothing  but  the  raillery  glancing  through  the  deep 
lashes  of  her  brown  eyes  which  were  very  beautiful, 
could  have  brought  me  to  the  self-sacrifice  involved. 
I  lived  through  the  delight  and  anguish  of  that  supreme 
evening,  and  found  myself,  as  it  were,  almost  immediately 
afterward  in  society.  It  could  not  have  been  quite  im 
mediately,  for  when  I  called  at  the  Governor's  soon  after 
New- Year's  and  he  asked  me  if  I  had  made  many  New- 
Year's  calls  I  answered  that  I  had  not  made  any  because 
I  knew  no  one.  Then  he  said  I  might  have  called  at  his 
house;  and  I  did  not  fail,  on  this  kind  reproach,  to  go  to 
Miss  Chase's  next  reception,  where  again  she  laughed  at 
'<;'/'  my  supposed  dignity  in  refusing  to  dance;  she  would  not 
suppose  my  inability. 

But  before  entering  that  field  so  flowery  fair  which 
society  now  seemed  to  open  before  me  perhaps  I  had 
better  continue  my  recollections  of  a  man  whose  public 
career  has  its  peculiar  pathos.  It  was  his  constant,  his 
intense,  his  very  just  desire  to  be  President;  no  man 
of  his  long  time  was  fitter  to  be  President,  unless  his  am 
bition  was  a  foible  that  unfitted  him.  He  accepted  not 
the  first  place,  but  the  second  place,  in  the  administration 
of  the  man  whose  place  as  President  he  had  so  ardently 
longed  to  fill,  and  after  he  had  resigned  his  governorship  of 
Ohio  and  gone  to  Washington  as  Secretary  of  the  Treasury 
under  Lincoln  I  saw  him  there  when  I  went  to  look  after 
the  facts  of  the  consulship  which  had  been  offered  me. 
His  fellow  Ohioans  must  have  swarmed  upon  him  in 
the  eagerness  for  public  service  afterward  much  noted 
in  them,  and  I  do  not  blame  him  for  imagining  that  I 
had  called  upon  him  in  the  hope  that  he  would  urge 

155 


YEARS    OF   MY    YOUTH 

my  case  upon  the  President.  He  said,  rather  eagerly, 
that  he  had  no  influence  with  the  administration  (it 
likewise  became  Lincoln's  own  humorous  complaint) 
quite  before  I  had  asked  it,  and  was  sorry  that  he  could 
not  help  me;  and  when  I  thanked  him  and  remarked 
that  I  believed  the  President's  private  secretaries,  Hay 
and  Nicolay,  were  interested  in  my  affair,  he  said, 
with  visible  relief,  Oh  well,  then,  I  was  in  the  best 
possible  hands;  as  indeed  it  turned  out.  I  had  heard 
before  that  he  had  spoken  to  the  President  in  my 
behalf,  and  he  may  very  well  have  felt  that  he  had 
done  his  best. 

Four  years  later,  and  ten  years  after  my  first  acquaint 
ance  with  Chase,  I  went  to  call  upon  him  at  his  hotel  in 
New  York,  when  I  was  lately  returned  from  my  consular 
post  in  Venice,  and  ventured  to  offer  him  my  congratula 
tions  upon  his  accession  to  the  chief-justiceship  of  the 
Supreme  Court.  He  answered  bluntly  that  it  was  not  the 
sort  of  office  he  had  aspired  to,  and  intimated  that  it 
was  a  defeat  of  his  real  aspirations.  He  was  not  commonly 
a  frank  man,  I  believe,  but  perhaps  he  felt  that  he  could 
be  frank  with  the  boy  I  must  still  have  seemed  even  at 
twenty-eight,  bringing  the  devotion  he  possibly  over- 
imagined  in  me.  Since  then  those  words  of  his,  which 
were  the  last  I  was  to  hear  from  him,  have  been  of  an 
increasing  appeal  with  me;  and  if  the  Republicans  had 
not  had  Lincoln  I  still  think  it  was  a  pity  they  could  not 
have  had  Chase.  At  the  end,  the  Democrats  would  not 
have  him. 


VIII 

Chase  was  of  course  our  man  for  the  1860  nomination, 
and  the  political  relations  between  him  and  our  chief 

were  close;  but  somehow  I  went  more  to  other  houses  than 

156 


YEARS    OF    MY    YOUTH 

to  his,  though  I  found  myself  apparently  launched  from 
it  upon  a  social  tide  that  bore  me  through  all  the  doors 
of  the  amiable  little  city.  I  was  often  at  the  evening 
parties  (we  called  them  evening  parties  then)  which  his 
daughter  gave,  and  one  day  the  Governor  himself,  as 
we  met  in  the  street,  invited  me  to  luncheon  with  him. 
I  duly  went  and  passed  the  shining  butler's  misgiving 
into  the  dining-room,  where  I  found  the  family  at  table 
with  no  vacant  place  among  them.  The  Governor  had 
forgotten  me!  That  was  clear  enough,  but  he  was  at 
once  repentant,  and  I  lunched  with  him,  outwardly  for 
giving,  but  inwardly  resolved  that  it  should  be  the  last 
time  I  would  come  at  his  informal  bidding.  I  have  since 
forgotten  much  more  serious  engagements  myself;  I 
have  not  gone  to  dinners  where  I  have  promised  over  my 
own  signature  to  go;  but  at  twenty-one  men  are  proud, 
and  I  was  prouder  then  than  I  can  yet  find  any  reason 
for  having  been. 

In  our  capital  at  that  day  we  had  rather  the  social 
facts  than  the  social  forms.  We  were  invited  to  parties  ., 
ceremoniously  enough,  but  we  did  not  find  it  necessary/ 
to  answer  whether  we  would  come  or  not.  Our  hostess 
remained  in  doubt  of  us  till  we  came  or  did  not  come; 
at  least  that  was  the  case  with  young  men;  we  never, 
inquired  whether  it  was  so  with  young  girls  or  not.  But 
sometimes  when  a  certain  youth  wished  to  go  with  a 
certain  maiden  he  found  out  as  delicately  as  he  could 
whether  she  was  invited,  and  if  she  was  he  begged  her 
to  let  him  go  with  her,  and  arrived  with  her  in  one  of 
lumbering  two-horse  hacks  which  supplied  our  cab- 
service,  and  which  I  see  still  bulking  in  the  far  perspective 
of  the  State  Street  corner  of  the  State  House  yard.  If 
you  had  courage  so  high  or  purse  so  full  you  had  sent  the 
young  lady  a  flower  which  she  wore  to  the  party,  prefer 
ably  a  white  camellia  which  the  German  florist,  known 

157 


YEARS    OF   MY    YOUTH 

to  our  young  world  only  as  Joe,  grew  very  successfully, 
and  allowed  you  to  choose  from  the  tree.  Why  preferably 
a  camellia  I  could  not  say  after  this  lapse  of  time ;  perhaps 
because  its  cold,  odorless  purity  expressed  the  unim- 
passioned  emotion  which  oftenest  inspired  the  gift  and  its 
acceptance.  It  was  very  simple,  very  pastoral;  I  do 
not  know  when  Columbus  outgrew  this  custom,  which  of 
course  it  did  long  ago. 

Bringing  a  young  lady  to  a  party  necessarily  meant 
nothing  but  that  you  enjoyed  the  pleasure  of  bringing 
her.  Very  likely  she  found  her  mother  there  when  she 
came  with  you,  unmindful,  the  one  and  the  other,  that 
there  was  such  a  thing  as  chaperonage  in  a  more  fastidi 
ous  or  censorious  world.  It  seems  to  me,  indeed,  that 
parties  at  the  Columbus  houses  were  never  wanting 
in  the  elders  whom  our  American  society  of  girls  and 
boys  used  to  be  accused  of  ignoring.  They  superabounded 
at  the  legislative  receptions,  but  even  at  the  affairs  which 
my  sophistication  early  distinguished  from  those  per 
functory  hospitalities  there  were  mature  people  enough, 
both  married  and  unmarried,  who,  though  they  had  felt 
no  charge  concerning  their  daughters  or  nieces,  found  it 
agreeable  to  remain  till  the  young  ladies  were  ready  to 
be  seen  home  by  their  self-chosen  escorts.  A  youth  who 
danced  so  reluctantly  as  I,  was  rather  often  thrown  upon 
these  charitable  elders  for  his  entertainment,  and  I  cannot 
remember  ever  failing  of  it.  People,  and  by  people  I  do 
not  mean  women  only,  read  a  good  deal  in  that  idyllic 
Columbus,  and  it  was  my  delight  to  talk  with  any  one  who 
would  about  the  new  books  or  the  old.  The  old  books  were 
known  mostly  to  that  number  of  professional  men — 
lawyers,  doctors,  divines,  and  scientists — which  was  dis 
proportionately  large  in  our  capital;  they  were  each 
cultivated  in  his  own  way,  and  in  mine,  too,  or  the  better 

part  of  it,  as  I  found.     The  young  and  the  younger  women 

158 


YEARS    OF    MY    YOUTH 

read  the  current  fiction  and  poetry  at  least  enough  to  be 
asked  whether  they  had  read  this  thing  or  that;  and  there 
was  a  group  of  young  men  with  whom  I  could  share  my 
^sometimes  aggressive  interest  in  our  favorite  authors. 
I  put  the  scale  purposely  low;  I  think  that  I  could 
truthfully  say  that  there  was  then  no  American  com 
munity  west  of  the  Alleghanies  which  surpassed  ours 
in  the  taste  for  such  things.  At  the  same  time  I 
must  confess  that  it  would  be  easy  for  such  an  ex 
clusively  literary  spirit  as  I  was  to  deceive  himself,  and 
to  think  that  he  always  found  what  he  may  have 
oftener  brought. 

For  a  long  time  after  the  advent  of  our  new  journalism, 
the  kind  of  writing  which  we  practised — light,  sarcastic, 
a  little  cruel,  with  a  preference  for  the  foibles  of  our 
political  enemies  as  themes — seemed  to  be  the  pleasure  of 
good  society,  which  in  that  serious  yet  hopeful  time  did 
not  object  to  such  conscience  as  we  put  into  our  mocking. 
Some  who  possibly  trembled  at  our  boldness  darklingly 
comforted  themselves  for  our  persiflage  by  the  good  cause 
in  which  it  frisked.  When  anything  very  daring  came 
out  in  the  afternoon  the  young  news-editor  in  his  round 
of  calls  could  hear  the  praise  of  it  from  charming  readers 
in  the  evening,  or  he  might  be  stopped  in  the  street  next 
day  and  told  how  good  it  was  by  the  fathers,  or  brothers, 
or  brothers-in-law,  of  those  charming  readers.  It  was 
more  like  the  prompt  acclaim  the  drama  enjoys  than  the 
slow  recognition  of  literature;  but  I,  at  least,  was  always 
trying  to  make  my  writing  literature,  and  after  fifty-odd 
years  it  may  perhaps  be  safely  owned  that  I  had  mainly  a 
literary  interest  in  the  political  aspects  and  events  which 
I  treated.  I  felt  the  ethical  quality  of  the  slavery  question, 
and  I  had  genuine  convictions  about  it;  but  for  prac 
tical  politics  I  did  not  care;  I  wished  only  to  understand 

enough  of  them  to  seize  any  chance  for  a  shot  at  the 

159 


YEARS    OF    MY    YOUTH 

other  side  which  they  might  give.  I  had  been  in  the 
midst  of  practical  politics  almost  from  my  childhood; 
through  my  whole  youth  the  din  of  meetings,  of  rallies, 
of  conventions  had  been  in  my  ears;  but  I  was  never 
/at  a  meeting,  a  rally,  or  a  convention;  I  have  never 
yet  heard  a  political  speech  to  the  end.  For  a  future 
novelist,  a  realist,  that  was  a  pity,  I  think,  but  so 
it  was. 

In  that  day  of  lingering  intolerance,  intolerance  which 
can  scarcely  be  imagined  in  this  day,  and  which  scarcely 
stopped  short  of  condemning  the  mild  latitudinarianism 
of  the  Autocrat  of  the  Breakfast  Table  as  infidelity,  every 
one  but  a  few  outright  atheists  was  more  or  less  devout. 
In  Columbus  everybody  went  to  church;  the  different 
forms  of  Calvinism  drew  the  most  worshipers;  our  chief 
was  decorously  constant  with  his  family  at  the  Episcopal 
service;  but  Reed  was  frankly  outside  of  all  ecclesiastical 
allegiance,  and  I  who,  no  more  than  he,  attended  any 
religious  service,  believed  myself  kof  my  father's  Sweden- 
borgian  faith;  at  any  rate;  I  could  make  it  my  excuse 
for  staying  away  from  other  churches,  since  there  were 
none  of  mine.  '  While  I  am  about  these  possibly  need 
less  confidences  I  will  own  that  sermons  and  lectures 
as  well  as  speeches  have  mostly  been  wearisome  to  me, 
and  that  I  have  heard  only  as  many  of  them  as  I  must/ 
Of  the  three,  I  prefer  sermons;  they  interest  me,  they 
seem  really  to  concern  me;  but  I  have  been  apt  to  get  a 
suggestive  thought  from  them  and  hide  away  with  it  in 
a  corner  of  my  consciousness  and  lose  the  rest.  My 
absences  under  the  few  sermons  which  I  then  heard 
must  have  ended  chiefly  in  the  construction  or  the  recon 
struction  of  some  scene  in  my  fiction,  or  some  turn  of 
phrase  in  my  verse. 

Naturally,  under  these  circumstances,  the  maturer 
men  whom  I  knew  were  oftener  doctors  of  medicine  than 

160 


YEARS    OF    MY    YOUTH 

doctors  of  divinity;  in  fact,  I  do  not  think  I  knew  one 
clergyman.  This  was  not  because  I  was  oftener  sick 
than  sorry;  I  was  often  sorry  enough,  and  very  sensible 
of  my  sins,  though  I  took  no  established  means  of  re 
penting  them;  but  I  have  always  found  the  conversation 
of  physicians  more  interesting  than  that  of  most  other 
men,  even  authors.  I  have  known  myself  in  times  past 
to  say  that  they  were  the  saints  of  the  earth,  as  far  as  we 
then  had  saints,  but  that  was  in  the  later  Victorian  period 
when  people  allowed  themselves  to  say  anything  in  honor 
of  science.  Now  it  is  already  different;  we  have  begun 
to  have  our  doubts  of  doubt  and  to  believe  that  there  is 
much  more  in  faith  than  we  once  did;  and  I,  within  the 
present  year,  my  seventy-ninth,  have  begun  to  go  to 
church  and  to  follow  the  sermon  with  much  greater, 
or  more  unbroken,  attention  than  I  once  could,  per 
haps  because  I  no  longer  think  so  much  in  the  terms 
of  fiction  or  meditate  the  muse  as  I  much  more  used 
to  do. 

In  those  far  days  I  thought  prose  fit  mainly  for  every 
day  use  in  newspaper  work.  I  was  already  beginning  to 
print  my  verses  in  such  of  the  honored  Eastern  periodicals 
as  would  take  them:  usually  for  nothing.  I  wrote  for 
the  Saturday  Press  of  New  York,  which  ambitious  youth 
everywhere  were  then  eager  to  write  for,  and  I  wrote  for 
the  Atlantic  Monthly  oftener  than  I  printed  in  it.  I  have 
told  all.  this  and  more  in  My  Literary  Passions  and  I  will 
not  dwell  here  upon  the  whirl  of  aesthetic  emotion  in 
which  I  eddied  round  and  round  at  that  tumultuous 
period.  In  that  book  I  have  also  sufficiently  told  the 
story  of  my  first  formal  venture  in  the  little  volume  of 
verse  which  I  united  with  my  friend  John  J.  Piatt  in 
offering  to  the  world.  But  I  may  add  here  that  it  ap 
peared  just  at  Christmas-time  in  1859  from  the  press  of  a 

hopeful  young  publisher  of  Columbus  who  was  making 

161 


YEARS    OF   MY    YOUTH 

his  experiment  in  the  disquieting  hour  when  no  good 
thing  was  expected  to  come  out  of  our  Western  Nazareth. 
We  two  were  of  the  only  four  poets  west  of  the  Alleghanies 
who  had  yet  been  accepted  by  the  Atlantic,  and  our 
publisher  had  the  courage  to  make  our  book  very  pretty 
in  print  and  binding.  It  was  so  pretty  that  I  am  afraid 
some  readers  liked  it  for  its  looks;  one  young  lady  said 
that  I  at  least  could  have  no  trouble  in  choosing  what 
Christmas  presents  I  should  make  my  friends.  She  was 
that  very  beautiful  girl  who  easily  bore  the  palm  for 
beauty  in  Columbus,  and  I  do  not  yet  understand  how 
I  was  able  to  reject  her  unprofessional  suggestion  with  as 
much  pride  as  if  she  had  been  plain.  I  gave  my  book  to 
no  one,  in  my  haughty  aversion  from  even  the  shadow  of 
advertising,  and  most  of  my  friends  had  their  revenge,  I 
suppose,  in  not  buying  it. 


IX 

I  had  begun  now  to  know  socially  and  intrinsically  the 
little  capital  which  I  had  known  only  politically  and 
extrinsically  during  the  two  winters  passed  there  as  a 
legislative  correspondent.  I  then  consorted  with  the 
strangers  whom  their  share  in  the  government  made 
sojourners,  and  who  had  little  or  no  local  quality  to  dis 
tinguish  them  from  one  another.  I  shared  the  general 
ized  hospitalities  offered  them  with  that  instinctive  mis 
giving  which  I  have  rather  more  than  hinted ;  and  though 
I  distinguished  among  them,  and  liked  and  valued  certain 
of  them,  yet  I  had  a  painful  sense  of  our  common  exterior- 
ality  and  impermanence.  I  cannot  say  that  I  ever 
expected  to  become  part  of  the  proper  life  of  the  city, 
and  when  suddenly  I  found  myself  in  that  life,  if  not  of  it, 
I  was  very  willing  to  find  it  charming.  How  charming 

162 


YEARS    OF    MY    YOUTH 

it  was  compared  with  the  life  of  other  cities  I  had  no 
means  of  knowing,  but  now  after  the  experiences,  not  too 
exhaustive,  of  half  a  century  I  still  feel  it  to  have  been 
charming,  with  the  wilding  grace  proper  to  all  the  West 
in  those  days,  and  the  refinement  remembered  from  the 
varied  culture  (such  culture  as  there  was)  of  the  East 
and  South  it  derived  from. 

Not  so  many  people  in  our  town  could  have  known  me 
for  my  poetry  as  for  my  journalism,  and  I  do  not  pretend 
that  the  sexes  were  equally  divided  in  their  recognition. 
I  have  intimated  my  fancy  that  with  most  men,  men  of 
affairs,  men  of  the  more  serious  callings,  the  face  of  the 
poet  was  saved  by  the  audacity  of  the  paragrapher.  If 
I  could  be  so  sharp,  so  hard  in  my  comment  on  the  day's 
events,  I  could  not  be  so  soft  as  I  seemed  in  those  rhymes 
where  I  studied  the  manner  of  Heine,  the  manner  of 
Tennyson,  and  posed  in  this  or  that  dramatized  person 
ality.  I  cannot  flatter  myself  that  I  did  not  seem  odd 
sometimes  to  many  of  my  fellow-citizens,  though  I  hope 
that  with  some  of  the  hardest-headed  among  them  I  was 
acceptable  for  qualities  which  recommend  average  men 
to  one  another.  Some  of  that  sort  made  friends  with  me; 
some  even  who  were  of  an  entirely  diverse  political  think 
ing  tolerated  my  mockeries  of  opinions  which  they  sup 
posed  their  principles.  But  neither  my  pleasure  nor  my 
pride  was  in  such  friendships.  What  I  wished  to  do  al 
ways  and  evermore  was  to  think  and  dream  and  talk 
literature,  and  literature  only,  whether  in  its  form  of 
prose  or  of  verse,  in  fiction,  or  poetry,  or  criticism.  I 
held  it  a  higher  happiness  to  stop  at  a  street  corner  with 
a  congenial  young  lawyer  and  enter  upon  a  fond  dis 
cussion  of,  say,  De  Quincey's  essays  than  to  prove  myself 
worthy  the  respect  of  any  most  eminent  citizen  who  knew 
not  or  loved  not  De  Quincey.  But  I  held  it  far  the 
highest  happiness  to  call  at  some  house  where  there  were 

163 


YEARS    OF    MY    YOUTH 

young  girls  waiting  and  willing  to  be  called  upon  and  to 
join  them  in  asking  and  saying  whether  we  had  read  this 
or  that  late  novel  or  current  serial.  It  is  as  if  we  did 
nothing  then  but  read  late  novels  and  current  serials, 
which  it  was  essential  for  us  to  know  one  another's  minds 
upon  down  to  the  instant;  other  things  might  wait,  but 
these  things  were  pressing. 

Of  course  there  were  some  houses  where  such  problems 
were  of  more  immediate  and  persistent  interest  than 
other  houses.  Such  a  house  was  the  ever-dear  house  of 
the  S.  family,  which  made  itself  a  home  any  hour  of  the 
day  up  to  midnight  for  such  youth  as  had  once  been 
adopted  its  sons.  It  was  not  only  a  literary  house,  it 
was  even  more  a  musical  house,  where  there  was  both 
singing  and  playing,  with  interludes  of  laughing  and 
joking  in  all  forms  of  seemly  mirth,  with  the  whole  family, 
till  the  little  boys  of  it  stumbled  up  the  stairs  half  asleep. 
I  could  not  play,  but  I  was  sometimes  suffered  by  that 
large-hearted  hospitality  to  try  singing;  and  I  could  talk 
with  the  best.  So,  it  was  my  more  than  content  in  the 
lapses  of  the  music  to  sit  with  the  young  aunt  (she  seemed 
so  mature  in  her  later  twenties  to  me  in  my  earliest)  and 
exchange  impressions  of  the  books  new  and  old  that  we 
had  been  reading.  We  frequenters  of  the  house  held  her 
in  that  honor  which  is  the  best  thing  in  the  world  for  young 
men  to  feel  for  some  gentle  and  cultivated  woman;  I 
suppose  she  was  a  charming  person  apart  from  her 
literary  opinions;  but  we  did  not  think  of  her  looks; 
we  thought  of  her  wise  and  just  words,  her  pure  and 
clear  mind. 

It  was  the  high  noon  of  Tennyson  and  Thackeray  and 
George  Eliot  and  Dickens  and  Charles  Reade,  whose 
books  seemed  following  one  another  so  rapidly.  The 
Newcomes  was  passing  as  a  serial  through  Harper's 

Magazine,  and  we  were  reading  that  with  perhaps  more 

164 


YEARS    OF   MY    YOUTH 

pleasure  than  any  of  the  other  novels  and  with  the  self- 
satisfaction  in  our  pleasure  which  I  have  before  this 
argued  was  Thackeray's  most  insidious  effect  with  youth 
striving  to  spurn  the  world  it  longed  to  shine  in.  We 
went  about  trying  to  think  who  in  the  story  was  like 
whom  in  life,  and  our  kind  hostess  was  reading  it,  too, 
and  trying  to  think  that,  too;  but  it  was  not  well  for  her 
to  say  what  she  thought  in  the  case  of  the  handsomest, 
and  for  several  reasons,  really,  the  first  among  us.  It 
appeared  that  she  thought  he  was  like  Clive  Newcome 
and  that  we  others  were  like  those  friends  of  his  whom 
in  the  tale  his  nature  was  shown  subordinating.  She 
said  something  like  this  to  some  one,  and  when  her  saying 
came  to  us  others  we  revolted  in  a  body.  No,  we  would 
not  have  that  theory  of  our  relation  to  our  friend;  and 
I  do  not  know  to  what  infuriate  excess  of  not  calling 
for  a  week  we  carried  our  resentment.  I  do  not  know 
how  after  the  week,  if  it  was  so  long,  we  began  calling 
again;  but  I  surmise  it  was  through  something  said  or 
done  by  that  dear  Miss  A.  which  made  it  easy  for 
her  sister  to  modify  her  wounding  theory  into  a  rec 
ognition  of  the  proud  equality  which  bound  us  friends 
together. 

We  are  all  dead  now,  all  save  me  and  the  youngest 
daughter  of  the  house,  but  as  I  think  back  we  are  all 
living  again,  and  others  are  living  who  are  also  dead. 
Among  these  is  a  young  lady  visitor  from  a  neighboring 
city,  one  of  those  beautiful  creatures  who  render  the 
Madonna  faces  of  the  painters  credible,  and  of  a  prompt 
gaiety  which  shared  our  wonted  mirth  in  its  own  spirit. 
Her  beauty  might  have  dedicated  her  to  any  mysterious 
fate;  beauty  is  often  of  such  tragical  affinition;  but  not 
her  gaiety;  and  yet  the  glad  die,  too,  and  this  glad 
creature  within  a  year  had  gone  to  the  doom  which  sent 
no  whisper  back  to  the  hearts  left  lifelong  aching.  Her 

165 


YEARS   OF   MY   YOUTH 

father  was  appointed  consul  to  a  Mediterranean  port, 
and  she  sailed  with  him  in  the  ship  which  sailed  with 
them  both  into  eternity,  unseen,  unsignaled,  as  mes- 
sageless  as  if  it  had  been  a  mist  swept  from  the  face 
of  the  sea. 

But  well  a  year  before  this  time  and  a  year  after 
our  first  meeting  in  Columbus  I  saw  her  in  Boston, 
in  a  house  swept  as  wholly  from  the  face  of  the  earth 
as  that  ship  from  the  face  of  the  sea.  I  suppose  the 
Court  House  in  Boston  is  an  edifice  as  substantial  as 
it  is  plain,  but  for  me,  when  I  look  at  the  place 
where  it  stands  my  vision  pierces  to  the  row  of  quiet, 
dignified  mansions  which  once  lined  that  side  of 
Somerset  Street,  and  in  one  of  which  I  somehow 
knew  that  I  should  find  with  her  uncle's  family  the 
beautiful  creature  already  so  unimaginably  devoted  to 
tragedy,  to  mystery,  to  the  eternal  baffle  of  surmise. 
It  seemed  that  from  often  being  there  she  knew  the 
city  so  enchanted  and  enchanting  to  me  then,  and  she 
went  about  with  me  from  one  wonder  of  it  to  another; 
and  it  remains  in  the  glimmer  of  that  association,  which 
no  after-custom  could  wholly  eclipse.  It  was  a  moment 
of  the  glad  young  American  life  of  other  days  which 
seems  so  impossible  to  after  days  and  generations;  and 
with  the  Common  and  its  then  uncaterpillared  elms,  with 
the  Public  Garden,  just  beginning  in  leaf  and  flower,  with 
the  stately  dwellings  which  looked  upon  those  pleasances 
in  the  streets  long  since  abandoned  to  business,  with  the 
Public  Library,  the  fine  old  Hancock  House,  and 
the  Capitol  as  Bullfinch  designed  and  left  it,  and  the 
Athenaeum  as  it  used  to  be,  and  Faneuil  Hall,  swarming 
with  memories  for  my  young  ardor,  and  the  Old  State 
House,  unvisited  by  its  manifold  transformations, — the 
brave  little  city  of  the  past  is  all  contemporaneous 

again. 

166 


YEARS    OF   MY   YOUTH 


As  I  have  said,  all  they  of  that  Columbus  house  but 
one  are  gone.  One  of  the  little  boys  went  before  they 
were  men,  and  then  the  other;  the  mother  went  long 
afterward;  the  elder  daughter,  who  had  been  the  widow 
of  our  repudiated  Clive  Newcome,  went  longer  afterward 
yet;  and  then  still  later,  finding  myself  once  on  a  very 
mistaken  lecturing-tour  in  Kansas,  where  our  beloved 
Miss  A.  had  lived  many  married  years,  I  asked  for  her, 
hoping  to  see  her,  and  heard  that  she  had  died  the  year 
before.  But  first  of  all  the  father  died,  leaving  me  the 
memory  of  kindness  which  I  hardly  know  how  to  touch 
aright.  He  was  my  physician  as  well  as  my  friend,  and 
saw  me  through  the  many  maladies,  real  and  unreal,  of 
my  ailing  adolescence,  but  he  would  have  no  fee  for  curing 
me  of  either  my  pains  or  my  fears.  I  had  come  to  him  first 
with  my  father,  who  somehow  knew  him  before  me,  and 
it  was  as  if  he  became  another  father  to  me.  Often  in 
those  nights  of  singing  and  playing,  of  talking  and  joking, 
he  would  look  in  for  a  moment  between  patients  to 
befriend  our  jollity;  and  when  at  last  it  came  to  my 
leaving  Columbus,  and  going  that  far  journey  to  Venice, 
whither  I  seemed  bound  as  on  a  journey  to  another 
planet,  he  asked  me  one  night  into  his  little  outside  office 
by  the  State  Street  gate,  and  had  me  tell  him  what  pro 
vision  I  had  made  for  the  chances  before  me.  I  told 
him,  and  then  whether  he  thought  it  not  enough  in  that 
war-time  when  the  personal  risks  were  doubled  by  the 
national  risks  he  said,  "Well,  I  am  not  a  rich  man,  or  the 
son  of  a  rich  man,  but  if  you  think  you  need  something  ^ 
more,  I  can  let  you  have  it."  I  had  been  keeping  my 
misgivings  to  myself,  but  now  I  owned  them  and  bor 
rowed  the  two  hundred  dollars  which  he  seemed  to  have"  >^ 
there  with  him,  as  if  in  expectation  of  my  need. 
12  167 


YEARS    OF    MY    YOUTH 

For  a  darker  tint  in  the  picture  I  have  been  painting 
of  my  past  let  me  record  here  a  fact  which  may  commend 
itself  for  the  younger  reader's  admonition;  the  old  can 
not  profit  by  it,  perhaps,  though  as  long  as  we  live  we  are 
in  danger  of  forgetting  kindness.  When  my  family  first 
came  to  Columbus  we  were  much  beholden  to  another 
family,  poor  like  ourselves,  which  did  everything  but 
turn  itself  out  of  doors  to  let  us  have  the  little  house  we 
were  to  occupy  after  them.  They  shared  it  with  us  till 
they  could  place  themselves  elsewhere;  and  my  father 
and  mother  remained  bound  to  them  in  willing  gratitude. 
When  I  came  back  to  the  capital  after  my  five  years  of 
exile  in  our  village  I,  too,  remembered  our  common  debt, 
but  when  the  world  began  to  smile  upon  me  I  forgot  the 
friends  who  had  not  forgotten  me  till  one  day  my  father 
wished  me  to  go  with  him  to  see  them.  The  mother  of 
the  family  received  me  with  a  sort  of  ironical  surprise, 
and  then  her  hurt  getting  the  better,  or  the  worse,  of  her 
irony,  she  said  some  things  about  my  losing  sight  of 
humble  friends  in  the  perspectives  opening  so  alluringly 
before  me.  I  could  not  recall,  if  I  would,  just  the  things 
she  said,  but  they  scorched,  and  the  place  burns  yet; 
and  if  I  could  go  back  and  repair  the  neglect  which  she 
brought  home  to  me  how  willingly,  after  nearly  sixty  years, 
would  I  do  it!  But  at  the  time  I  hardened  my  heart 
and  as  I  came  away  I  tried  to  have  my  father  say  some 
thing  in  extenuation  of  the  fault  which  I  angrily  tried 
to  make  a  merit  of;  but  with  all  his  tenderness  for  me  he 
would  not  or  could  not. 

Perhaps  he,  too,  thought  that  I  had  been  a  snob,  a 
thing  that  I  had  not  needed  the  instruction  of  Thackeray 
to  teach  me  the  nature  of;  but  I  hope  I  was  not  so  bad  as 
that;  I  hope  there  was  nothing  meaner  in  me  than  youth 
flattered  out  of  remembrance  of  old  kindness  by  the  new 
kindness  in  which  it  basked.  I  will  confess  here  that  I 

168 


YEARS    OF    MY    YOUTH 

have  always  loved  the  world  and  the  pleasures  which 
other  sages  pretend  are  so  vapid.  If  I  could  make  society 
over,  or  make  it  over  a  little,  so  that  it  would  be  inclusive 
rather  than  exclusive,  I  believe  I  would  still  like  to  go  into 
it,  supposing  it  always  sent  a  motor  to  fetch  and  carry 
me  and  did  not  insist  upon  any  sort  of  personal  exertion 
from  me.  But  when  I  was  between  twenty  and  twenty- 
three  and  lived  in  Columbus  I  was  willing  to  be  at  almost 
any  trouble  for  it.  All  up  and  down  the  wide  shady 
streets  which  ran  from  High  eastward,  and  were  called 
Rich  and  Town  and  State  and  Broad,  there  were  large 
pleasant  houses  of  brick,  with  or  without  limestone  fac 
ings,  standing  in  lawns  more  ample  or  less,  and  showing 
through  their  trees  the  thrilling  light  of  evening  parties 
that  burst  with  the  music  of  dancing  from  every  window. 
Or  if  this  was  not  the  case  with  every  house,  beautiful 
girls  were  waiting  in  every  other  to  be  called  upon,  beside 
the  grates  with  their  fires  of  soft  coal,  which  no  more 
discriminated  between  winter  and  summer  than  the  door- 
yard  trees  which  seem  to  have  been  full-foliaged  the  whole 
year  round. 

It  may  be  that  with  the  passage  of  time  there  began 
to  be  shadows  in  the  picture  otherwise  too  bright.  It 
seems  to  me  that  in  time  the  calls  and  balls  may  have 
begun  to  pall  and  a  subtle  Weltschmerz,  such  as  we  had 
then,  to  pierce  the  heart;  but  scarcely  any  sense  of  that 
remains.  What  is  certain  is  that  the  shadow  of  incredible 
disaster  which  was  soon  to  fill  the  whole  heaven  still 
lurked  below  the  horizon,  or  if  it  showed  itself  there, 
took  the  form  of  retreating  clouds  which  we  had  but  to 
keep  on  laughing  and  singing  in  order  to  smile  altogether 
out  of  sight.  The  slavery  question  which  was  not  yet 
formidably  a  question  of  disunion  was  with  most  of  the 
older  men  a  question  of  politics,  though  with  men  like 
Dr.  S.  it  was  a  question  of  ethics;  with  the  younger  men 

169 


YEARS    OF   MY    YOUTH 

it  was  a  partisan  question,  a  difference  between  Demo 
crats  and  Republicans;  with  me  it  was  a  question  of 
emotions,  of  impassioned  preoccupations,  and  in  my 
newspaper  work  a  question  of  copy,  of  material  for  joking, 
for  firing  the  Southern  heart.  It  might  be  brought 
home  to  us  in  some  enforcement  of  the  Fugitive  Slave 
Law,  as  in  the  case  of  the  mother  who  killed  her  children 
in  Cincinnati  rather  than  let  them  be  taken  back  with 
her  to  Kentucky;  or  in  the  return  of  an  escaping  slave 
seized  in  our  own  railroad  station;  and  there  was  at  first 
the  horror  of  revolted  humanity  and  then  the  acquiescence 
of  sickened  patience.  It  was  the  law,  it  was  the  law; 
and  the  law  was  constitutional  and  must  be  obeyed  till 
it  was  repealed.  Looking  back  now  to  that  law-abiding 
submission,  I  can  see  that  it  was  fine  in  its  way,  and  I 
can  see  something  pathetic  in  it  as  well  as  in  the  whole 
attitude  of  our  people,  the  South  and  North  confronted 
in  that  inexorable  labyrinth,  neither  side  quite  meaning 
it  or  realizing  it. 

That  was  a  very  crucial  moment  indeed,  but  the  crisis 
had  come  for  us  five  or  six  years  before  when  the  case 
of  some  conscientious  citizens,  arrested  in  the  Western 
Reserve  for  violation  of  that  abominable  law,  came 
before  Chief- Justice  Swann  of  the  Ohio  Supreme  Court. 
It  was  hoped  by  the  great  majority  of  the  Republican 
party  and  largely  expected  that  Justice  Swann's  opinion 
would  in  whatever  sort  justify  the  offenders,  and  it 
was  known  that  the  Governor  would  support  the  de 
cision  with  an  armed  force  against  the  United  States, 
which  must  logically  attempt  the  execution  of  the  law 
with  their  troops.  Very  probably  the  state  of  Ohio 
would  have  been  beaten  in  such  an  event,  but  Justice 
Swann  defeated  the  popular  hope  and  expectation  before 
hand  by  confirming  the  judgment  against  those  right- 
minded  but  wrong-headed  friends  of  humanity.  Ohio  was 

170 


YEARS    OF    MY    YOUTH 

spared  the  disaster  which  befell  South  Carolina  five  or 
six  years  later,  and  Justice  Swann  suffered  the  penalty 
of  men  whose  judgment  is  different  from  the  convictions 
of  their  contemporaries.  From  being  one  of  the  most 
honored  leaders  of  his  party,  with  the  prospect  of  any 
highest  place  in  its  gift,  he  remained  one  of  the  most 
distinguished  jurists  of  his  time  whose  best  reward  came 
coldly  from  those  who  would  not  blame  where  they  could 
not  praise.  In  Ohio  the  judiciary  is  elective,  and  Judge 
Swann  hastened  the  decision  of  the  court  before  the 
meeting  of  the  Republican  State  Convention  in  order  that 
his  party  might  not  unwittingly  renominate  him  in  the 
expectation  of  an  opinion  from  him  favorable  to  the  good 
men  of  Ohio  who  had  broken  the  bad  law  of  the  United 
States. 

There  is  a  legend,  cherished  more  for  its  dramatic  possi 
bility  than  for  any  intrinsic  probability,  that  when  Lincoln 
appointed  Noah  L.  Swayne  justice  of  the  Supreme  Court 
of  the  United  States  he  supposed  that  he  was  appointing 
Joseph  Swann,  and  that  he  was  misled  by  the  similarity 
of  the  names,  not  very  great  either  to  ear  or  eye.  Swayne 
was  then  one  of  the  most  eminent  members  of  the  Colum 
bus  bar,  and,  though  he  lacked  the  judicial  experience 
of  Swann,  was  entirely  fit  for  the  place  he  was  called 
to  fill.  If  such  a  mistake  was  made  it  was  one  which 
could  well  retrieve  itself,  but  it  seems  a  very  idle  fancy 
which  has  toyed  with  its  occurrence.  It  would  be  al 
together  too  nice  in  the  face  of  its  unlikelihood  to  inquire 
whether  Lincoln  might  have  wished  to  express  a  cer 
tain  sympathy  for  the  eminent  jurist  in  the  arrest  of  his 
public  career  which  followed  his  decision.  One  would 
first  have  to  establish  the  fact  of  such  a  feeling  in  him 
and  prove  that  if  he  had  it  he  would  have  been  so  care 
less  of  the  jurist's  name  as  to  mistake  another  name  for  it. 
These  are  the  things  that  happen  in  fiction  when  the 

171 


YEARS    OF    MY    YOUTH 

novelist  is  hard  driven  by  the  exigencies  of  his  plot,  but 
cannot  easily  occur  in  sober  history. 

I  met  both  of  these  prominent  men  during  my  Columbus 
years,  as  an  improminent  young  fellow-citizen  might, 
Justice  Swayne  rather  often,  and  Justice  Swann  once 
at  least,  in  their  own  houses.  On  this  sole  occasion,  which 
dimly  remains  with  me,  I  was  paying  one  of  those  evening 
calls  which  we  youth  were  diligent  in  making  at  houses 
where  there  were  young  ladies;  and  after  due  introduction 
to  the  great  jurist,  I  was  aware  of  him,  withdrawn  and 
darkling  in  the  next  room,  not  unkindly,  but  not  sensibly 
contributing  to  the  gaiety  of  the  time  in  me.  That  might 
have  been  after  I  was  asked  to  a  party  at  his  house, 
which  I  was  told,  by  a  lady  versed  in  such  mysteries, 
was  the  greatest  distinction  which  society  had  to  offer 
in  our  city,  and  I  suppose  from  this  fact  that  the  popular 
blame  for  his  momentous  decision,  even  if  it  was  of  much 
force,  did  not  follow  him  into  more  rarefied  air. 


XI 

We  young  men  of  that  time  were  mostly  Republicans, 
but  some  of  us  were  Democrats  and  some  of  us  were  South 
erners,  or  derivatively  Southern.  I  have  said  how  little 
society  with  us  was  affected  by  New  England,  even  in  such 
a  custom  as  Thanksgiving,  and  I  may  go  a  little  farther 
and  say  how  it  was  characterized  for  good  as  well  as  for 
evil  by  the  nearer  South  rather  than  the  farther  East, 
but  more  for  good  than  for  evil.  Many  people  of  Southern 
origin  among  us  had  chosen  a  Northern  home  because 
they  would  rather  live  in  a  Free  State  than  a  Slave  State; 
they  had  not  cast  their  sectional  patriotism,  but  when  it 
came  to  a  question  of  which  ideal  should  prevail,  they 
preferred  the  Northern  ideal.  They  derived  from  that 
South  which  antedated  the  invention  of  the  cotton-gin, 

172 


YEARS    OF    MY    YOUTH 

and  which  could  take  a  leading  part  in  keeping  the 
Northwestern  Territory  free,  with  Ohio  the  first  Free 
State  born  of  that  great  mother  of  Free  States.  The 
younger  generation  of  their  blood  were  native  Ohioans, 
and  these  were  not  distinguishable  from  the  children 
of  the  New-Englanders  and  the  Scotch-Irish  Pennsyl- 
vanians  by  anything  that  I  can  remember.  We  had 
already  begun  to  be  Ohioans,  with  an  accent  of  our  own, 
and  I  suppose  our  manners  were  simpler  and  freer  than 
those  of  the  East,  but  the  American  manners  were  then 
everywhere  simple  and  free,  and  are  so  yet,  I  believe, 
among  ninety-nine  hundred-thousandths  of  our  ninety- 
nine  millions.  It  seems  to  me  now  that  the  manners  in 
Columbus  were  very  good  then  among  the  young  people. 
No  one  can  say  what  change  the  over-muchness  of  sub 
sequent  money  may  have  made  in  them,  but  one  likes 
to  think  the  change,  if  any,  is  not  for  the  better.  There 
seems  to  have  been  greater  pecuniary  equality  then  than 
there  is  now;  there  was  an  evener  sky-line,  with  scarcely 
a  sky-scraping  millionaire  breaking  it  any  where.  \  Within 
what  was  recognized  as  society  there  was  as  much  social 
as  pecuniary  equality;  apparently  one  met  the  same 
people  everywhere  on  that  easily  ascertained  level  above 
the  people  who  worked  for  their  living  with  their  hands. 
These  were  excluded,  as  they  always  have  been  excluded 
from  society  in  all  times  and  places;  so  that  if  I  had  still 
been  a  compositor  at  the  printer's  case  I  could  not  have 
been  received  at  any  of  the  houses  that  welcomed  me  as 
a  journalist,  though  that  did  not  occur  to  me  then,  and 
only  just  now  occurs  to  me,  as  something  strange  and 
sad;  something  that  forever  belies  our  democracy,  but 
is  so  fast  and  deep-rooted  in  the  conditions  which  our 
plutocracy  has  kept  from  our  ancestral  monarchies  and 
oligarchies  and  must  keep  as  long  as  men  live  upon  one 
another  in  the  law  of  competition. 

173 


YEARS    OF    MY    YOUTH 

In  one  house  there  was  more  singing  and  playing  and 
in  another  more  reading  and  talking.  All  the  young 
ladies  were  beautiful,  with  the  supremacy  of  that  young 
lady  whom  it  was  our  poetry  to  hold  so  beautiful  that 
no  other  might  contest  it.  As  I  believe  the  use  still  is 
in  the  South,  we  called  them  Miss  Lilly,  Miss  Julia,  Miss 
Sally,  Miss  Fanny,  Miss  Maggie/ whether  they  were  the 
older  or  the  younger  daughters  of  the  family.  We  were 
always  meeting  them  at  parties  or,  failing  that  or  in 
cluding  that,  we  went  to  call  upon  them  at  their  houses. 
We  called  in  the  evening  and  it  was  no  strange  thing 
for  a  young  man  to  call  every  evening  of  the  week,  not 
at  one  house,  but  at  three  or  four.  How,  in  the  swift 
sequence  of  the  parties,  we  managed  so  often  to  find  the 
young  ladies  at  home  remains  one  of  the  mysteries  which 
age  must  leave  youth  to  solve.  Possibly  in  that  sharply 
foreshortened  perspective  of  the  past  the  parties  show 
of  closer  succession  than  they  really  were. 

At  most  of  the  houses  we  saw  only  the  young  ladies; 
it  was  they  whom  we  asked  for;  but  there  were  other 
houses  where  the  mothers  of  the  family  received  with  the 
daughters,  and  at  one  of  these  my  welcome  was  imme 
diately  of  a  kindness  and  always  of  a  conscience  which  it 
touches  me  to  realize.  I  was  taken  at  the  best  I  meant 
as  well  as  the  best  I  was  by  the  friend  who  was  the  ex 
quisite  spirit  of  the  house,  and  made  me  at  home  in  it. 
My  world  had  been  very  small,  and  it  has  never  since 
been  the  greatest,  but  I  think  yet,  as  I  divined  then, 
that  she  was  of  a  social  genius  which  would  have  made 
her  in  any  great-worldlier  capital  the  leader  she  was  in 
ours,  where  her  supremacy  in  that  sort  was  no  more 
questioned  than  the  incomparable  loveliness  of  that  most 
beautiful  girl  whom  every  one  worshiped.  Her  house 
expressed  her,  so  that  when  her  home  finally  changed  to 
another  the  new  house  obeyed  the  magic  of  her  taste 

174 


YEARS    OF    MY    YOUTH 

and  put  on  the  semblance  of  the  first,  with  a  conservatory 
breathing  through  it  the  odor  of  her  flowers  and  the 
murmur  of  the  dove  that  lived  among  them:  herself 
a  flower-like  and  birdlike  presence,  delicate,  elegant,  such 
as  might  have  been  fancied  of  some  fine,  old-world  condi 
tion  in  a  new-world  reading  of  it.  She  lived  to  rule 
socially  in  a  community  which  attested  its  gentleness  by 
its  allegiance  to  her  until  she  was  past  eighty,  but  when 
I  knew  her  first  she  was  too  young  to  be  titularly  accepted 
as  their  mother  by  her  stepdaughters  and  was  known  to 
them  as  their  cousin  in  what  must  have  been  her  own 
convention;  but  I  suppose  she  liked  to  be  not  less  than 
sovereign  among  her  equals.  With  me  she  was  not  only 
the  kindest,  but  the  most  candid  of  my  friends;  my 
literary  journalism  and  later  my  literature  may  have 
been  to  her  liking,  but  she  never  flattered  me  for  them 
when,  as  I  now  know,  too  much  praise  had  made  me 
hungry  for  flattery.  No  young  man  such  as  I  was  then 
could  have  had  a  wiser  and  faithfuler  friend,  and  I  ren 
der  her  memory  my  tribute  after  so  many  years  from  a 
gratitude  which  cannot  be  spoken.  After  so  many  years 
I  cannot  make  out  whether  she  accepted  or  merely 
suffered  my  extreme  opinions  in  politics;  though  she  was 
wholly  Ohioan,  her  husband's  family  had  close  affiliations 
with  the  South;  but  hers  was  certainly  a  Republican 
house,  as  nearly  all  the  houses  I  frequented  were.  What 
may  have  made  her  even  anticipatively  my  friend  was  our 
common  acceptance  of  the  Swedenborgian  philosophy, 
which  long,  long  afterward,  the  last  time  I  saw  her,  I 
spoke  of  as  a  philosophy.  But  then  she  rejected  the 
notion  with  scorn;  it  might  be  a  pleasant  fancy,  she  said, 
but  a  philosophy,  no;  and  I  perceived  that  she  had 
come  the  way  of  that  agnosticism  which  the  whole  cul 
tivated  world  had  taken.  Now  I  have  heard  that  in  her 
last  years  she  went  back  to  the  faith  which  was  perhaps 

175 


YEARS    OF    MY    YOUTH 

more  inherited  than  reasoned  in  both  of  us.  But  I  am 
sure  that  it  was  at  first  a  bond  and  that  she  was  con 
scientiously  true  to  this  bond  of  a  common  spiritual 
tradition,  when  upon  some  public  recognition  of  my 
work  she  reminded  me  how  according  to  Swedenborg 
every  beautiful  thing  we  said  or  did  was  by  an  influx 
from  the  divine.  I  submitted  outwardly,  but  inwardly 
I  rebelled:  not  that  my  conceit  of  the  things  I  did  was  so 
very  great;  I  believe  I  thought  rather  modestly  of  myself 
for  doing  them,  and  I  always  meant  to  do  much  better 
things;  in  fact  I  still  have  my  masterpiece  before  me; 
but,  poor  things  as  they  were,  I  wished  to  feel  them  wholly 
mine. 

For  a  kindred  reason  I  quite  as  altogether  refused, 
and  more  explicitly,  the  theory  of  my  old  friend,  Moncure 
D.  Conway,  as  to  the  true  function  of  the  West  in  litera 
ture.  He  was  then  a  young  Unitarian  minister,  preaching 
at  Cincinnati  an  ever-widening  liberalism  in  religion,  and 
publishing  a  slight  monthly  magazine  named  after  The 
Dial  of  Emerson  at  Concord,  and  too  carefully  studied 
from  it.  For  this  paler  avatar  of  that  transcendental 
messenger  he  had  asked  me  for  contributions,  and  so  a 
friendship,  which  lasted  throughout  our  lives,  sprang 
up  between  us.  When  he  once  came  to  Columbus  he 
came  to  lunch  with  me,  and  quite  took  my  appetite  away 
by  propounding  his  theory  that  the  West  was  to  live 
its  literature,  especially  its  poetry,  rather  than  write  it, 
the  East  being  still  in  that  darkling  period  when  it  could 
not  live  its  literature.  I  do  not  remember  the  arguments 
by  which  he  supported  his  thesis;  but  proofs  as  of  holy 
writ  could  not  have  persuaded  me  of  it  as  far  as  I  myself 
was  concerned.  My  affair  was  to  make  poetry,  let  who 
would  live  it,  and  to  make  myself  known  by  both  the 
quality  and  quantity  of  my  poetry.  It  is  not  clear  to 
me  now  how  I  declared  my  position  without  immodesty, 

W 


YEARS    OF    MY    YOUTH 

but  somehow  I  declared  it,  and  so  finally  that  Conway 
was  very  willing  to  carry  away  with  him  for  his  magazine 
a  piece  of  rhyme  which  I  had  last  made.  He  could  the 
more  willingly  do  this  because  The  Dial  was  one  of  those 
periodicals,  commoner  then  than  now,  that  paid  rather 
in  glory  than  in  money;  in  fact  it  was  not  expected  to 
pay  anything  in  money,  so  that  I  doubly  defeated  him: 
I  was  not  only  not  living  my  poetry,  I  was  not  even  living 
by  it. 


IV 


THE  days  of  the  years  when  youth  is  finding  its  way 
into  manhood  are  not  those  which  have  the  most  flat 
tering  memories.  It  is  better  with  the  autobiographer 
both  before  and  after  that  time,  though  both  the  earlier 
and  later  times  have  much  to  offer  that  should  keep  him 
modest.  But  that  interval  is  a  space  of  blind  struggle, 
relieved  by  moments  of  rest  and  shot  with  gleams  of  light, 
when  the  youth,  if  he  is  fortunate,  gathers  some  inspira 
tion  for  a  worthier  future.  His  experiences  are  vivid  and 
so  burnt  into  him  that  if  he  comes  to  speak  of  them  it  will 
require  all  his  art  to  hide  from  himself  that  he  has  little 
to  remember  which  he  would  not  much  rather  forget.  In 
his  own  behalf,  or  to  his  honor  and  glory,  he  cannot  recall 
the  whole  of  his  past,  but  if  he  is  honest  enough  to  intimate 
some  of  its  facts  he  may  be  able  to  serve  a  later  genera 
tion.  His  reminiscences  even  in  that  case  must  be  a 
tissue  of  egotism,  and  he  will  merit  nothing  from  their 
altruistic  effect. 


Journalism  was  not  my  ideal,  but  it  was  my  passion,  and 
I  was  passionately  a  journalist  well  after  I  began  author. 
I  tried  to  make  my  newspaper  work  literary,  to  give  it 
form  and  distinction,  and  it  seems  to  me  that  I  did  not 
always  try  in  vain,  but  I  had  also  the  instinct  of  actuality, 
of  trying  to  make  my  poetry  speak  for  its  time  and  place. 
For  the  most  part,  I  really  made  it  speak  for  the  times  and 
places  I  had  read  of;  but  while  Lowell  was  keeping  my 

178 


YEARS    OF    MY    YOUTH 

Heinesque  verses  among  the  Atlantic  MSS.  until  he  could 
make  sure  that  they  were  not  translations  from  Heine  I 
was  working  at  a  piece  of  realism  which  when  he  printed 
it  in  the  magazine  our  exchange  newspapers  lavishly 
reprinted.  In  that  ingenuous  time  the  copyright  law 
hung  loosely  upon  the  journalistic  consciousness  and 
it  was  thought  a  friendly  thing  to  reproduce  what 
ever  pleased  the  editorial  fancy  in  the  periodicals  which 
would  now  frowningly  forbid  it,  but  with  less  wisdom 
than  they  then  allowed  it,  as  I  think.  I  know  that  as  its 
author  the  currency  of  The  Pilot's  Story  in  our  exchanges 
gave  me  a  joy  which  I  tried  to  hide  from  my  senior  in  the 
next  room;  and  I  bore  heroically  the  hurt  I  felt  when 
some  of  the  country  papers  printed  my  long,  overrunning 
hexameters  as  prose.  I  had  studied  the  verse  not  alone 
in  Longfellow's  "Evangeline,"  but  in  Kingsley's  "Andro 
meda,"  and  Goethe's  "Hermann  and  Dorothea,"  while 
my  story  I  had  taken  from  a  potentiality  of  our  own  life, 
and  in  the  tragedy  of  the  slave  girl  whose  master  gambles 
her  away  at  monte  on  a  Mississippi  steamboat,  and  who 
flings  herself  into  the  river,  I  was  at  home  with  circum 
stance  and  scenery.  I  still  do  not  think  the  thing  was 
ill  done,  though  now  when  I  read  it  (I  do  not  read  it 
often)  I  long  to  bring  it  closer  to  the  gait  and  speech  of 
life.  The  popularity  of  the  piece  had  its  pains  as  well  as 
pleasures,  but  the  sharpest  anguish  I  suffered  was  from 
an  elocutionist  who  was  proposing  to  recite  it  on  the 
platform,  and  who  came  to  me  with  it  to  have  me  hear 
him  read  it.  He  did  not  give  it  with  the  music  of  my 
inner  sense,  but  I  praised  him  as  well  as  I  could  till  he 
came  to  the  point  where  the  slave  girl  accuses  her  master 
with  the  cry  of — 

"Sold  me!    Sold  me!    Sold!     And  you  promised  to  give  me 
my  freedom!" 

179 


YEARS    OF    MY    YOUTH 

when  he  said,  "  And  here  I  think  I  will  introduce  a  shriek." 
"A  shriek?"  I  faltered.  "Yes,  don't  you  think  it  would 
fill  the  suspense  that  comes  at  the  last  word  'Sold!'? 
Something  like  this,"  and  he  gave  a  screech  that  made  my 
blood  run  cold,  not  from  the  sensibility  of  the  auditor, 
but  the  agony  of  the  author.  "Oh  no!"  I  implored  him, 
and  he  really  seemed  to  imagine  my  suffering.  He 
promised  to  spare  me,  but  whether  he  had  the  self-denial 
to  do  so  I  never  had  the  courage  to  inquire. 

In  the  letters  to  my  sister  which  I  was  so  often  writing 
in  those  Columbus  years  I  find  record  of  the  constant 
literary  strivings  which  the  reader  shall  find  moving  or 
amusing  as  he  will.  "I  have  sold  to  Smith  of  the  Odd 
Fellow's  Monthly  at  Cincinnati  that  little  story  I  read  to 
you  early  last  summer.  I  called  it  'Not  a  Love  Story.' 
He  gave  me  six  dollars  for  it;  and  he  says  that  as  soon 
as  I  have  time  to  dress  up  that  translation  which  B. 
rejected  he  will  buy  that.  At  the  rate  of  two  dollars  a 
page  it  will  bring  me  sixteen  or  eighteen  dollars.  '  Bobby ' ' 
— I  suppose  some  sketch — "is  going  the  rounds  of  the 
country  papers.  The  bookseller  here  told  our  local  editor 
that  it  was  enough  to  make  anybody's  reputation — that 
he  and  his  family  laughed  prodigiously  over  it.  ...  I 
have  the  assurance  that  I  shall  succeed,  but  at  times  I 
tremble  lest  something  should  happen  to  destroy  my 
hopes.  I  think,  though,  that  my  adversity  came  first, 
and  now  it  is  prosperity  lies  before  me.  I  am  going  to 
try  a  poem  fit  to  be  printed  in  the  Atlantic.  They  pay 
Fullerton  twenty-five  dollars  a  page.  I  can  sell,  now, 
just  as  much  as  I  will  write." 

It  was  two  years  yet  before  that  poem  I  was  trying 
for  the  Atlantic  was  fit,  and  sold  to  the  magazine  for 
twenty-five  dollars,  though  it  was  three  pages  long.  I 
was  glad  of  the  pay,  but  the  gain  was  nothing  to  the  glory; 

and  with  the  letter  which  Lowell  wrote  me  about  it  in  the 

180 


YEARS    OF    MY    YOUTH 

pocket  next  my  heart,  and  felt  for  to  make  sure  of  its 
presence  every  night  and  morning  and  throughout  the 
day,  I  was  of  the  potentiality  of  immeasurable  success. 
I  should  have  been  glad  of  earning  more  money,  for  there 
were  certain  things  I  wished  to  do  for  those  at  home 
which  I  could  not  do  on  my  salary  of  ten  dollars  a  week, 
already  beginning  to  be  fitfully  paid.  Once,  I  find  that 
I  had  not  the  money  for  the  white  gloves  which  it  seems  I 
expected  myself  to  wear  in  compliance  with  usage  at  a 
certain  party;  and  there  were  always  questions  of  clothes. 
Dress-coats  were  not  requisite  then  and  there;  the  young 
men  wore  frock-coats  for  the  evening,  but  I  had  am 
bitiously  provided  myself  with  the  other  sort  upon  the 
example  of  a  friend  who  wore  his  all  day;  I  wore  mine 
outdoors  once  by  day,  and  then  presciently  dedicated  it 
to  evening  calls.  The  women  dressed  beautifully,  to  my 
fond  young  taste;  they  floated  in  airy  hoops;  they  wore 
Spanish  hats  with  drooping  feathers  in  them,  and  were 
as  silken  balloons  walking  in  the  streets  where  men 
were  apt  to  go  in  unblacked  boots  and  sloven  coats  and 
trousers.  The  West  has,  of  course,  brushed  up  since, 
but  in  that  easy-going  day  the  Western  man  did  not 
much  trouble  himself  with  new  fashions  or  new  clothes. 


ii 

Whether  the  currency  of  The  Pilot's  Story  and  the 
Atlantic  publication  of  my  Heinesque  poems  added  to 
my  reputation  in  our  city  I  could  not  say.  It  was  the 
belief  of  my  senior  on  the  newspaper  that  our  local 
recognition  was  enervating  and  that  it  had  better  go  no 
farther,  but  naturally  I  could  not  agree  with  a  man  of  his 
greater  age  and  observation,  and  it  is  still  a  question  with 
me  whether  recognition  hurts  when  one  has  done  one's 
best.  I  cannot  recall  that  I  ever  tried  to  invite  it;  I 

181 


YEARS    OF   MY    YOUTH 

hope  not;  but  certainly  I  worked  for  it  and  hoped  for  it, 
and  I  doubt  if  any  like  experiment  was  ever  received 
with  more  generous  favor  than  ours  by  a  community 
which  I  had  reasons  for  knowing  was  intelligent  if  not 
critical.  Our  paper,  if  I  may  say  it,  was  always  good 
society,  but  after  a  while  and  inevitably  it  became  an 
old  story,  or  at  least  an  older  story  than  at  first,  though 
it  never  quite  ceased  to  be  good  society.  There  remained 
the  literary  interest,  the  aesthetic  interest  for  me,  after 
the  journalistic  interest  had  waned;  there  was  always  the 
occasion,  or  the  occasion  could  always  be  made.  Pas 
sages  in  those  old  letters  home  remind  me  that  we  talked 
long  and  late  about  The  Marble  Faun  one  night  at  a 
certain  house;  at  another  we  talked  about  other  books 
from  nine  o'clock  on,  I  imagine  till  midnight.  At  another 
the  young  lady  of  the  house  "sang  about  a  hundred  songs." 
At  still  another  the  girl  hostess  said,  "You  haven't  asked 
me  to  sing  to-night,  but  I  will  sing,"  and  then  sang 
divinely  half  the  night  away,  for  all  I  know.  There  was  a 
young  lady  who  liked  German  poetry,  and  could  talk 
about  Goethe's  lyrics;  and  apparently  everywhere  there 
were  the  talking  and  the  laughing  and  the  singing  which 
fill  the  world  with  bliss  for  youth. 

Perhaps  I  sacrifice  myself  in  vain  by  my  effort  to  impart 
the  sense  of  that  past  which  faded  so  long  ago;  perhaps 
some  readers  will  hold  me  cheap  for  the  fondness  which 
recurs  to  it  and  lingers  in  it.  But  I  believe  that  I  prize 
its  memories  because  they  seem  so  full  of  honor  and  wor 
ship  for  the  girlhood  and  womanhood  which  consecrate  it 
in  my  remembrance.  Within  this  gross  world  of  ours 
as  it  now  is,  women  are  still  so  conditioned  that  they 
can  lead  the  life  of  another  and  a  better  world,  and  if 
they  shall  ever  come  to  take  their  rightful  share  of 
the  government  of  the  world  as  men  have  made  it  I 

believe  they  will  bring  that  other  and  better  world  of 

182 


YEARS    OF   MY    YOUTH 

theirs  with  them  and  indefinitely  advance  the  millennium. 
I  have  the  feeling  of  something  like  treason  to  the  men 
I  knew  in  that  time,  when  I  own  that  I  preferred  the 
society  of  women  to  theirs,  but  I  console  myself  with  the 
reflection  that  they  would  probably  have  said  the  same 
as  to  mine.  Our  companionship  could  hardly  have 
chosen  itself  more  to  my  liking.  It  was  mainly  of  law 
students,  but  there  was  here  and  there  one  engaged  in 
business,  who  was  of  a  like  joking  and  laughing  with  the 
rest.  We  lived  together  in  a  picturesque  edifice,  Gothic 
and  Tudor,  which  had  been  meant  for  a  medical  college, 
and  had  begun  so,  and  then  from  some  financial  infirmity 
lapsed  to  a  boarding-house  for  such  young  men  as  I  knew, 
though  we  were  not  without  the  presence  of  a  young 
married  pair,  now  and  then,  and  even  a  young  lady,  a 
teacher  or  the  like,  who  made  us  welcome  when  we  ended 
a  round  of  evening  calls  outside  by  calling  on  them  from 
room  to  room.  In  my  boyhood  days  at  Columbus  I  was 
sometimes  hustled  off  the  sidewalk  by  the  medical  stu 
dents  coming  from  the  College,  then  in  its  first  pros 
perity,  and  taking  up  the  whole  pavement  as  they  swept 
forward  with  interlinked  arms.  This  was  at  noontime, 
when  they  were  scarcely  less  formidable  than  the  specters 
which  after  dark  swarmed  from  the  dissecting-room,  and 
challenged  the  boy  to  a  trial  of  speed  in  escaping  them. 
Now  the  students  had  long  been  gone  from  the  College 
and  I  dwelt  in  its  precincts  with  such  other  favorites  of 
fortune  as  could  afford  to  pay  three  dollars  and  a  half 
a  week  for  their  board.  The  table  was  even  super 
abundant,  and  the  lodging  was  almost  flatteringly  com 
fortable  after  experience  of  other  places.  I  can  only 
conjecture  that  the  rooms  we  inhabited  had  been  meant 
for  the  students  or  professors  when  the  College  was  still 
a  medical  college.  They  were  large,  and  to  my  untutored 
eye,  at  least,  were  handsome,  and  romantically  lighted  by 
13  183 


YEARS    OF    MY    YOUTH 

windows  of  that  blend  of  Tudor  and  Gothic  which  I 
have  mentioned,  but  their  architecture  showed  more  on 
the  outside  than  on  the  inside,  and  of  course  the  pinnacles 
and  towers  of  the  edifice  were  more  accessible  to  the  eye 
without.  It  was  the  distinction  of  people  who  wished  to 
be  known  for  a  correct  taste  to  laugh  at  the  architecture  of 
the  College,  and  perhaps  they  do  so  still,  but  I  was  never 
of  these.  For  me  it  had,  and  it  has,  a  charm  which  I 
think  must  have  come  from  something  like  genius,  if  not 
quite  genius,  in  the  architect,  to  whose  daring  I  would  like 
to  offer  this  belated  praise.  At  any  rate  it  was  the  abode 
of  entire  satisfaction  to  me  in  those  happy  years  between 
1857  and  1860  when  I  could  not  have  wished  other  com 
panionship  than  I  had  there. 

There  could  have  been  no  gayer  table  than  we  kept, 
where  we  made  the  most  of  one  another's  jokes,  and 
were  richly  personal  in  them,  as  youth  always  is. 
The  management  was  of  the  simplest,  but  not  incom 
patible  with  dignity,  for  the  landlord  waited  upon  the 
table  himself,  and  whoever  the  cook  might  be,  the  place 
was  otherwise  in  the  sole  charge  of  an  elderly  maid,  with  a 
curious  defect  of  speech,  which  kept  her  from  answering, 
immediately  or  ultimately,  any  question  or  remark  ad 
dressed  to  her.  We  valued  her  for  this  impediment 
because  of  the  pathetic  legend  attaching  to  it,  and  we  did 
not  value  her  the  less,  but  the  more,  because  she  was 
tall  and  lank  and  uncouth  of  face  and  figure,  though  of  a 
beauty  in  her  absolute  faithfulness  to  her  duties  and  the 
kindness  beyond  them  which  she  always  showed.  The 
legend  was  that  in  her  younger  if  not  fairer  time  she  had 
been  married,  and  when  one  day  her  husband,  suddenly 
killed  in  an  accident,  was  brought  home  to  her,  she  tried 
to  speak,  but  could  not  speak,  and  then  ever  afterward 
could  only  speak  after  great  stress,  and  must  often  fall 

dumb,  and  go  away  without  speaking. 

184 


YEARS    OF    MY    YOUTH 

I  do  not  know  whether  we  really  believed  in  this  or  not, 
but  we  behaved  as  if  we  did,  and  revered  the  silent  heroine 
of  the  tragedy  as  if  it  were  unquestionably  true.  What 
kept  me  from  trying  to  make  it  into  a  poem  I  cannot  say, 
but  I  would  like  to  think  it  was  that  I  felt  it  above  rather 
than  below  the  verse  of  even  the  poet  I  meant  to  be. 
How  many  rooms  she  had  charge  of  I  could  as  little  say, 
but  I  am  certain  that  there  were  two  of  us  young  men 
in  each  of  them.  My  own  room-mate  was  a  poet,  even 
more  actual  than  myself,  though  not  meaning  so  much 
as  I  to  be  always  a  poet;  he  was  reading  law,  and  he 
meant  to  practise  it,  but  he  had  contributed  two  poems 
to  the  Atlantic  Monthly  before  any  of  mine  had  been 
printed  there.  This  might  have  been  a  cause  of  bitter 
ness  with  me ;  his  work  was  certainly  good  enough  to  be 
a  cause  of  bitterness,  and  perhaps  I  was  not  jealous  be 
cause  I  felt  that  it  would  be  useless;  I  should  like  to  believe 
I  was  not  even  jealous  of  him  for  being  so  largely  in  so 
ciety  before  I  was.  Later,  when  we  came  in  from  our 
evening  calls,  we  sometimes  read  to  each  other,  out  of 
what  books  I  could  not  say  now,  but  probably  some 
poet's;  certainly  not  our  own  verse:  he  was  too  wise  for 
that  and  I  too  shy. 

He  was  then  reading  law,  and  sometime  in  my  middle 
years  at  Columbus  he  left  us  to  begin  his  law  practice 
farther  West.  In  noticing  his  departure  as  a  friendly 
journalist  should  I  obeyed  his  wish  not  to  speak  of  him  as 
a  poet;  that,  he  said,  would  injure  him  with  his  new 
public;  but  whether  it  would  or  not  I  am  not  sure;  the 
Western  community  is  sometimes  curiously  romantic,  and 
does  not  undervalue  a  man  for  being  out  of  the  common 
in  that  way.  What  really  happened  with  him  was  that, 
being  of  a  missionary  family  and  of  a  clerical  tradition,  he 
left  the  law  in  no  great  time  and  studied  divinity.  It 

was  a  whole  generation  afterward  before  I  saw  him  again; 

185 


YEARS    OF    MY    YOUTH 

and  now  his  yellow  hair  and  auburn  beard  of  the  early 
days  were  all  one  white,  but  his  gentle  eyes  were  of  the 
old  hazel,  undimmed  by  the  age  that  was  creeping  upon 
us  both.  He  had  followed  me  with  generous  remem 
brance  and  just  criticism  in  my  fiction;  and  again  he 
made  me  a  sort  of  professional  reproach  for  dealing  in 
my  novels  (notably  in  A  Modern  Instance)  with  ethical 
questions  best  left  to  the  church,  he  thought.  I  thought 
he  was  wrong,  but  I  am  not  sure  that  I  so  strenuously 
think  so  now;  fiction  has  to  tell  a  tale  as  well  as  evolve 
a  moral,  and  either  the  character  or  the  principle  must 
suffer  in  that  adjustment  which  life  alone  can  effectively 
manage.  I  do  not  say  ideally  manage,  for  many  of  the 
adjustments  of  life  seem  to  me  cruel  and  mistaken. 
If  it  is  in  these  cases  that  religion  can  best  intervene,  I 
suppose  my  old  friend  was  right;  at  any  rate,  he  knows 
now  better  than  I,  for  he  is  where  there  is  no  manner  of 
doubt,  and  I  am  still  where  there  is  every  manner  of 
doubt. 

I  believe,  in  the  clerical  foreshadowing  of  his  future, 
perhaps,  he  was  never  of  those  wilder  moments  of  our 
young  companionship  when  we  roamed  the  night  under 
the  summer  moon,  or  when  we  forgathered  around  the 
table  in  a  booth  at  the  chief  restaurant,  and  over  a 
spirit-lamp  stewed  the  oysters  larger  and  more  delicious 
than  any  to  be  found  now  in  the  sea;  or  when  in  the 
quarter-hours  of  digestion  which  we  allowed  ourselves 
after  our  one-o'clock  dinner  we  stretched  ourselves  on 
the  grass,  often  sunburnt  brown,  before  the  College  and 
laughed  the  time  away  at  anything  which  pretended  itself 
a  joke. 

We  collegians  were  mostly  Republicans  as  most  of 
the  people  we  knew  were.  A  few  young  men  in  society 
were  not,  but  they  were  not  of  our  companionship,  though 

we  met  them  at  the  houses  we  frequented,  and  did  not 

186 


YEARS    OF   MY    YOUTH 

think  the  worse  of  them  for  being  Democrats.  In  fact, 
there  was  no  political  rancor  outside  of  the  newspapers,  and 
that  was  tempered  with  jocosity.  Slavery  had  been  since 
the  beginning  of  the  nation,  the  heritage  of  the  states  from 
the  colonies,  and  it  had  been  accepted  as  part  of  the 
order  of  things.  We  supposed  that  sometime,  somehow, 
we  should  be  rid  of  it,  but  we  were  not  sanguine  that 
it  would  be  soon;  and  with  so  many  things  of 
pressing  interest,  the  daily  cares,  the  daily  pleasures,  the 
new  books,  the  singing  and  laughing  and  talking  in  the 
pleasant  houses,  I  could  leave  the  question  of  slavery  in 
abeyance,  except  as  a  matter  of  paragraphing.  There 
had  been  as  many  warnings  of  calamity  to  come  as  ever 
a  people  had.  There  had  been  the  breaking  of  solemn 
promises  from  the  South  to  the  North;  there  had  been 
the  bloody  rights  between  the  sections  in  Kansas  and  the 
treacheries  of  the  national  government;  there  had  been 
the  quarrels  and  insults  and  violences  in  Congress;  there 
had  been  the  arrests  and  rescues  of  fugitive  slaves;  there 
had  been  the  growth  of  hostile  opinion,  on  one  side  fierce 
and  on  the  other  hard,  maturing  on  both  sides  in  open 
hate.  There  had  been  all  these  portents,  and  yet  when 
the  bolt  burst  from  the  stormy  sky  and  fell  at  Harper's 
Ferry  we  were  as  utterly  amazed  as  if  it  had  fallen  from  a 
heaven  all  blue. 


in 


Only  those  who  lived  in  that  time  can  know  the  feeling 
which  filled  the  hearts  of  those  who  beheld  in  John  Brown 
the  agent  of  the  divine  purpose  of  destroying  slavery. 
Men  are  no  longer  so  sure  of  God's  hand  in  their  affairs 
as  they  once  were,  but  I  think  we  are  surer  that  He  does 
not  authorize  evil  that  good  may  come,  and  that  we  can 
well  believe  the  murders  which  Brown  did  as  an  act  of 

187 


YEARS    OF    MY    YOUTH 

war  in  Kansas  had  not  His  sanction.  In  the  mad  skurry 
which  followed  the  incident  of  Harper's  Ferry  in  1859 
some  things  were  easily  shuffled  out  of  sight.  Probably 
very  few  of  those  who  applauded  or  palliated  Brown's 
attempt  knew  that  he  had  taken  men  from  their  wives 
and  children  and  made  his  partisans  chop  them  down 
that  their  death  might  strike  terror  into  the  pro-slavery 
invaders,  while  he  forbore  from  some  strange  policy  to 
slaughter  them  with  his  own  hand.  His  record  was  not 
searched  to  this  dreadful  fact  in  my  knowledge,  either 
by  the  Democrats  who  tried  to  inculpate  the  Republicans 
for  his  invasion  of  Virginia  or  by  the  Republicans  who 
more  or  less  disowned  him.  What  his  best  friends  could 
say  and  what  most  of  them  believed,  was  that  he  had  been 
maddened  by  the  murder  of  his  sons  in  Kansas,  and 
that  his  wild  attempt  was  traceable  to  the  wrongs  he  had 
suffered.  His  own  dignity  as  he  lay  wounded  and  cap 
tive  in  the  engine-house  at  Harper's  Ferry,  where  the 
volunteer  counsel  for  the  prosecution  flocked  upon  him 
from  every  quarter,  and  questioned  him  and  cross- 
questioned  him,  did  the  rest,  and  a  sort  of  cult  grew  up 
which  venerated  him  before  his  death.  I  myself  was 
of  that  cult,  as  certain  fervent  verses  would  testify  if 
I  here  refused  to  do  so.  They  were  not  such  very  bad 
verses,  as  verses,  though  they  were  technically  faulty  in 
places,  but  in  the  light  which  Mr.  Oswald  Villard's  history 
of  John  Brown  has  finally  cast  upon  that  lurid  passage 
of  his  life  I  perceive  that  they  were  mistaken.  He  was 
not  bloodier  than  most  heroes,  but  he  was  not  a  martyr, 
except  as  he  was  willing  to  sacrifice  himself  along  with 
others  for  a  holy  cause,  and  he  was  a  saint  only  of  the 
Old  Testament  sort  of  Samuel  who  hewed  Agag  in  pieces 
before  the  Lord.  But  from  first  to  last  he  was  of  the 
inevitable,  and  the  Virginians  could  no  more  have  saved 

themselves  from  putting  him  to  death  than  he  could 

188 


YEARS    OF    MY    YOUTH 

have  saved  himself  from  venturing  his  life  to  free  their 
slaves.  Out  of  that  business  it  seems  to  me  now  that 
they  came  with  greater  honor  than  their  Northern  friends 
and  allies.  The  South  has  enough  wrongs  against  the 
negroes  to  answer  for  in  the  past  and  in  the  present, 
but  we  cannot  lay  wholly  to  its  charge  the  fate  of  the 
slave's  champion;  he  was  of  the  make  of  its  own  sons  in 
his  appeal  to  violence,  and  apparently  the  South  under 
stood  him  better  than  the  North.  There  was  then  no  evil 
too  great  for  us  to  think  or  say  of  the  Virginians,  and  yet 
after  they  could  free  him  from  the  politicians,  mainly 
Northern,  who  infested  him  in  the  first  days  of  his  cap 
tivity,  to  make  political  capital  or  newspaper  copy  out 
of  him,  the  Virginians  tried  him  fairly,  as  those  unfair 
things  called  trials  go,  and  they  remained  with  a  sort  of 
respect  for  him  which  probably  puzzled  them.  Long 
after,  twenty-five  years  after,  when  I  was  in  an  an 
cient  Virginia  capital  it  was  my  privilege  to  meet  some 
of  Governor  Wise's  family;  and  I  noted  in  them 
this  sort  of  retrospective  respect  for  Brown;  they 
were  now  of  Republican  politics,  and  I  found  that  I  was 
not  nearly  Black  Republican  enough  for  them.  But  in 
the  closing  months  of  the  year  1859  there  was  no  man 
so  abhorred  and  execrated  by  the  so-called  Black  Re 
publicans  as  Governor  Wise. 

Without  going  to  the  files  of  our  own  newspaper  I 
cannot  now  say  just  how  we  treated  the  Harper's  Ferry 
incident  from  first  to  last,  but  I  am  safe  in  saying  that 
it  was  according  to  the  temperament  of  each  writer. 
Our  chief,  who  wrote  very  well  when  he  could  detach  his 
interest  from  the  practical  politics  so  absorbing  in  the 
capital  of  a  state  like  Ohio,  may  have  struck  the  key-note 
of  our  opinion  in  an  able  leader,  and  then  left  each  of  us 
to  follow  with  such  music  as  responded  in  us.  My  vague 

remembrance  of  the  result  is  the  daily  succession  of  most 

189 


YEARS    OF    MY    YOUTH 

penetrating,  most  amusing  comments  from  my  senior. 
The  event  offered  him  the  opportunity  of  his  life  for  that 
cold  irony  he  excelled  in  and  which  he  knew  how  to  use 
so  effectively  in  behalf  of  a  good  cause;  I  do  not  believe 
it  was  ever  employed  in  a  bad  one.  The  main  contribu 
tion  to  the  literature  of  the  event  from  his  junior  that  I 
can  distinctly  recall  was  that  ode  or  that  hymn  to  John 
Brown,  for  which  I  cannot  yet  be  ashamed  or  sorry,  how 
ever  I  must  rue  the  facts  that  have  forever  spoilt  my 
rapture  in  it.  I  have  the  sense  of  a  pretty  constant  pass 
ing  from  the  room  where  I  was  studying  the  exchanges 
for  material,  and  trying  to  get  my  senior's  laugh  for 
something  I  had  written,  or  staying  for  him  to  read  me  the 
article  he  had  just  begun  or  finished.  It  was  a  great 
time,  though  it  was  a  dreadful  time,  so  thick  with  fore 
cast,  if  we  had  only  known  it,  of  the  dreadfuler  time  to 
follow. 

While  I  have  been  saying  this  I  have  been  trying  to 
think  how  much  or  little  our  community  was  shaken 
by  an  event  that  shows  so  tremendous  in  the  retrospect, 
and  it  seems  to  me  little  rather  than  much.  People  knew 
the  event  was  tremendous,  but  so  had  the  battles  in 
Kansas  been,  and  so  had  the  attack  on  Sumner  in  the 
Senate  Chamber,  and  so  had  the  arrests  and  rescues  of 
the  fugitive  slaves.  They  were  of  the  same  texture, 
the  same  web  which  fate  was  weaving  about  us  and 
holding  us  faster,  hour  by  hour  and  day  by  day  while  we 
felt  ourselves  as  free  as  ever.  There  must  have  been 
talk  pretty  constant  at  first,  but  dying  away  without 
having  really  been  violent  talk,  among  people  who  dif 
fered  most  about  it.  What  I  think  is  that  most  people 
were  perhaps  bewildered,  and  that  waiting  in  their  daze 
they  did  not  say  so  much  as  people  would  now  imagine 
their  saying.  Or  it  may  be  that  my  memory  of  the  effect 

is  a  blur  of  so  many  impressions  that  it  is  impossible  to 

190 


YEARS    OF    MY    YOUTH 

detach  any  from  the  mass;  but  I  do  not  think  this  prob 
able.  The  fact  probably  is  that  people  did  not  realize 
what  had  happened  because  they  could  not,  because  their 
long  experience  of  enmity  between  the  South  and  North 
had  dulled  them  too  much  for  a  true  sense  of  what  had 
happened. 

But  I  wrote  home  to  my  father  my  disappointment  that 
his  paper  had  not  had  something  "violent"  about  the 
John  Brown  raid.  My  head,  which  abstractly  passionate 
and  concretely  descriptive  rhymes  had  once  had  wholly 
to  themselves,  was  now  filled  with  John  Brown  when  it 
could  be  relieved  of  a  news-editor's  duty;  I  thought  of 
him  and  him  only,  except  when  I  was  making  those 
perpetual  calls  at  those  pleasant  houses  where  the  young 
ladies  were  singing  or  talking  every  night.  I  got  some 
consolation  from  one  of  the  delightful  German  editors 
whom  I  seemed  to  know  in  those  days.  He  was  a  '48 
man,  and  he  carried  in  his  leg  a  ball  which  some  soldier 
of  the  king  had  planted  there  one  day  when  my  friend 
stood  behind  a  barricade  in  Berlin.  He  told  me,  as  I 
read  in  one  of  my  old  letters  home,  that  he  had  been 
teaching  his  children  the  stories  of  Schiller,  the  good  poet 
of  freedom,  of  Robert  Blum,  the  martyr  of  liberty,  and 
of  our  John  Brown.  He  says,  "My  liddle  girl,  ven  I 
deached  dem  to  her,  she  veeped." 

But  I  cannot  recall  having  spoken  of  Brown  with  my 
friend  Dr.  S.,  whom  I  was  so  apt  to  speak  with  of  the 
changing  aspects  of  the  slavery  question,  though  I  remem 
ber  very  well  his  coldness  to  my  enthusiasm  for  the  young 
English  poet,  Richard  Realf,  who  was  so  grotesquely 
Secretary  of  State  in  the  Republic  Brown  had  dreamed 
out,  but  who  had  passed  from  Canada  with  his  depart 
ment  before  the  incident  at  Harper's  Ferry,  and  was  in 
Texas  at  the  time  of  it  and  of  the  immediately  ensuing 
events.  What  affair  of  state  brought  him  to  Columbus 

m 


YEARS    OF    MY    YOUTH 

after  the  death  of  his  leader  and  comrades  I  did  not 
understand,  and  I  cannot  understand  yet  how  he  could 
safely  be  there  within  easy  reach  of  any  United  States 
marshal,  but  he  was,  no  doubt,  much  safer  there  than  in 
Texas,  and  he  stayed  some  days,  mainly  talking  with  me 
about  himself  as  a  poet  rather  than  as  a  Secretary  of 
State.  He  interested  me,  indeed,  much  more  as  a  poet, 
for  I  already  knew  him  as  the  author  of  some  Kansas  war 
lyrics,  which  I  am  not  sure  I  should  admire  so  much  now 
as  I  did  then.  He  was  a  charming  youth,  perhaps  my 
senior  by  two  years,  and  so  about  twenty-four,  gentle 
mannered,  sweet  voiced,  well  dressed,  and  girlishly 
beautiful.  I  knew,  as  he  was  prompt  and  willing  to  tell 
me  again,  that  he  had  been  a  protege*  of  Lady  Byron's,  and 
that  while  in  her  house  he  had  fallen  in  love  with  a  young 
kinswoman  of  hers,  and  was  forced  to  leave  it,  for  with 
all  his  gifts  he  was  the  son  of  an  agricultural  laborer, 
and  for  that  reason  no  desirable  match.  Yet  Lady 
Byron  seemed  to  have  remained  fond  of  him;  she  had 
helped  him  to  publish  a  volume  of  verse  which  he  had 
called  Guesses  at  the  Beautiful  (I  envied  him  the  title), 
and  at  parting  she  had  given  him  a  watch  for  a  keep 
sake  and  money  to  bring  him  to  America.  He  showed 
me  the  watch,  and  I  dare  say  the  volume  of  poems,  but 
I  am  not  sure  as  to  this,  and  I  vouch  for  no  particular 
of  his  story,  which  may  very  well  have  been  wholly  true. 
In  the  long  walks  and  long  talks  we  had  together,  when 
he  cared  more  to  speak  of  his  literary  than  his  military 
life,  I  cannot  make  out  that  he  expected  to  help  further 
in  any  attack  upon  the  South.  Apparently  he  shared  the 
bewilderment  which  every  one  was  in,  but  he  did  not 
seem  to  be  afraid  or  anxious  for  himself  as  part  of  the 
scheme  that  had  so  bloodily  failed.  He  was  not  keeping 
himself  secret,  and  he  went  on  to  Canada  as  safely  as  he 

had  come  from  Texas,  if  indeed  he  went  to  Canada. 

192 


YEARS    OF   MY   YOUTH 

While  he  was  briefly  with  us  a  hapless  girl,  of  those  whom 
there  is  no  hope  for  in  this  life,  killed  herself,  and  Realf 
went  to  the  wicked  house  where  she  lay  dead,  out  of  some 
useless  pathos,  since  she  was  dead.  I  reported  the  fact 
to  my  friend  Dr.  S.  with  a  faltering  tendency,  I  am  afraid, 
to  admire  Realf  for  it,  and  the  doctor  said,  coldly,  Yes, 
he  had  better  kept  away;  his  motive  had  already  been 
scandalously  construed.  It  was  this  world  speaking  at  its 
best  and  wisest,  but  I  am  not  sure  that  it  altogether  per 
suaded  me. 


IV 

Realf's  stay  in  Columbus  must  have  been  in  that  time 
of  abeyance  between  Brown's  capture  and  his  death; 
but  it  must  have  been  after  the  hanging  at  Charlestown 
that  one  night  I  was  a  particle  of  the  crowd  which  seemed 
to  fill  the  State  House  yard  on  its  western  front,  dimly 
listening  to  the  man  whose  figure  was  a  blur  against  the 
pale  stone.  I  knew  that  this  man  was  that  Abraham 
Lincoln  who  had  met  Stephen  A.  Douglas  in  the  famous 
Illinois  debates,  and  who  was  now  on  his  way  home  to 
Illinois  from  his  recognition  in  the  East  as  a  man  of 
national  importance.  I  could  not  well  hear  what  he  said, 
and  I  did  not  stay  long;  if  I  had  heard  perfectly,  I  might 
not,  with  my  small  pleasure  in  public  speaking,  have 
stayed  long;  and  of  that  incident,  and  of  the  man  whom 
history  had  already  taken  into  her  keeping,  and  tragedy 
was  waiting  to  devote  to  eternal  remembrance,  I  have 
only  the  vision  of  his  figure  against  the  pale  stone,  and  the 
black  crowd  spread  vaguely  before  him.  Later  I  had  a 
fuller  sense  of  his  historic  quality,  but  still  so  slight, 
when  he  stood  on  the  great  stairway  within  the  State 
House  and  received  the  never-ending  crowd  which  pushed 

upward,  man  and  woman  after  man  and  woman,  and 

193 


YEARS   OF   MY   YOUTH 

took  his  hand,  and  tried  to  say  something  as  fit  as  it  was 
fond.  That  would  have  been  when  he  was  on  the  jour 
ney,  which  became  a  flight,  to  his  inauguration  as  Presi 
dent  at  Washington.  He  had  been  elected  President, 
and  the  North  felt  safe  in  his  keeping,  though  the  dangers 
that  threatened  the  nation  had  only  gathered  denser  upon 
it,  and  the  strange  anomaly  which  called  itself  the  govern 
ment  had  been  constantly  betraying  itself  to  the  hostility 
within  it  and  without. 

The  people  who  pushed  upward  to  seize  the  great  hand 
held  out  to  every  one  looked  mostly  like  the  country  folk 
such  as  he  had  been  of,  and  the  best  of  him  always  was, 
and  I  could  hear  their  hoarse  or  cracked  voices  as  they 
hailed  him,  oftenest  in  affectionate  joking,  sometimes  in 
fervent  blessing;  but  for  anything  I  could  make  out  he 
answered  nothing.  He  stood  passive,  submissive,  with 
the  harsh  lines  of  his  lower  face  set  immovably,  and  his 
thick-lashed  eyes  sad  above  them,  while  he  took  the 
hands  held  up  to  him  one  after  another,  and  shook 
them  wearily,  wearily.  It  was  a  warm  day  such  as  in  late 
Februarjr,  or  earliest  March,  brings  the  summer  up  to 
southern  Ohio  before  its  time,  and  brings  the  birds  with 
it  for  the  delusion  of  a  week  or  a  fortnight;  and  as  we 
walked  out,  my  companion  and  I,  we  left  a  sweltering 
crowd  within  the  State  House,  and,  straying  slowly 
homeward,  suffered  under  a  sun  as  hot  as  June's. 


I  do  not  say  July's  sun  or  August's,  because  I  wish  my 
reader  to  believe  me,  and  any  one  who  has  known  the 
July  or  August,  or  the  September  even,  of  southern  Ohio 
has  known  something  worse  than  tropical  heat,  if  travelers 
tell  the  truth  of  the  tropics;  and  no  one  could  believe  me 

if  I  said  such  heat  ever  came  in  February  or  March. 

194 


YEARS    OF    MY    YOUTH 

There  were  whole  fortnights  of  unbroken  summer  heat 
in  Columbus,  when  the  night  scarcely  brought  relief 
from  the  day,  and  the  swarming  fly  ceded,  as  Dante  says, 
only  to  the  swarming  mosquito.  Few  people,  even  of 
those  who  might  have  gone,  went  away;  none  went  away 
for  the  season,  as  the  use  is  now,  though  it  is  still  much 
more  the  use  in  the  East  than  in  the  West.  There  were 
excursions  to  the  northern  lakes  or  to  Niagara  and  down 
the  St.  Lawrence;  there  were  even  brief  intervals  of 
.  resort  to  Cape  May;  but  the  custom  was  for  people  to 
1  stay  at  home,  to  wear  the  thinnest  clothes,  and  drink 
cooling  drinks,  and  use  fans,  and  try  to  sleep  under 
I  mosquito-bars,  after  sitting  out  on  the  front  steps.  That 
was  where  calls  were  oftenest  paid  and  received,  and  as 
long  as  one  was  young  the  talk  did  not  languish,  though 
how  one  did  when  one  was  old,  that  is,  thirty  or  forty, 
or  along  there,  we  who  were  young  could  not  have  im 
agined.  There  was  no  sea  or  any  great  water  to  send  its 
cooling  breath  over  the  land  which  stretched  from  the 
Ohio  River  to  Lake  Erie  with  scarcely  a  heave  of  its  vast 
level.  We  had  not  even  the  satisfaction  of  knowing  that 
we  were  suffering  from  a  heat-wave;  the  notion  had  not 
been  invented  by  quarter  of  a  century  yet;  we  suffered 
ignorantly  on  and  on,  and  did  not  intermit  our  occupa 
tions  or  our  pleasures;  some  of  us  did  not  even  carry 
umbrellas  against  the  sun;  these  we  reserved  for  the 
rain  which  could  alone  save  us,  for  a  few  hours  in  a  sudden 
dash,  or  for  a  day  in  the  storm  that  washed  the  air  clean 
of  its  heat. 

The  deluging  which  our  streets  got  from  these  tempests 
was  the  only  cleaning  which  I  can  recollect  seeing  them 
given.  There  was  indeed  a  chain-gang  which  intermit 
tently  hoed  about  in  the  gutters,  but  could  not  be  said  to 
clean  them,  while  it  remained  the  opprobrium  of  our 

civilization.    It  was  made  up  mostly  of  negroes,  but 

J95 


YEARS    OF    MY    YOUTH 

there  were  some  drink-sodden  whites  who  dragged  a 
lengthening  chain  over  the  dust  or  hung  the  heavy  ball 
which  each  wore  over  the  hollows  of  their  arms  when 
urged  to  more  rapid  movement.  Once  I  saw,  with  a 
peculiar  sense  of  our  common  infamy  in  the  sight,  a  quite 
well-dressed  young  man,  shackled  with  the  rest  and  hiding 
his  face  as  best  he  could  with  eyes  fastened  on  the  ground 
as  he  scraped  it.  Somehow  it  was  told  me  that  he  had 
been  unjustly  sentenced  to  this  penalty,  and  the  vision 
of  his  tragedy  remains  with  me  yet,  as  if  I  had  acted 
his  part  in  it.  I  dare  say  it  was  not  an  uncommon  experi 
ence  by  which  when  I  used  to  see  some  dreadful  thing, 
or  something  disgracefully  foolish,  I  became  the  chief 
actor  in  the  spectacle;  at  least  I  am  certain  that  I  suf 
fered  with  that  hapless  wretch  as  cruelly  as  if  I  had  been 
in  his  place.  Perhaps  we  are  always  meant  to  put  our 
selves  in  the  place  of  those  who  are  put,  or  who  put  them 
selves,  to  shame. 

Municipal  hygiene  was  then  in  its  infantile,  if  not  in  its 
embryonic  stage,  and  if  there  was  any  system  of  drainage 
in  Columbus  it  must  have  been  surface  drainage,  such  as 
I  saw  in  Baltimore  twenty-five  years  later.  After  the 
rain  the  sun  would  begin  again  its  daily  round  from  east 
to  west  in  a  cloudless  sky  where  by  night  the  moon  seemed 
to  reflect  its  heat  as  well  as  its  light.  They  must  still 
have  such  summers  in  Columbus,  and  no  doubt  the 
greatest  part  of  the  people  fight  or  faint  through  them 
as  they  do  in  our  cities  everywhere,  but  in  those  summers 
even  the  good  people,  people  good  in  the  social  sense, 
remained,  and  not  merely  the  bad  people  who  justly 
endured  hardship  because  of  their  poverty.  I  had  be 
come  accustomed  to  the  more  temperate  climate  of  the 
Lake  Shore,  and  I  felt  the  heat  as  something  like  a  per 
sonal  grievance,  but  not  the  less  I  kept  at  work  and  kept 

at  play  like  the  rest.    Once  only  I  was  offered  the  chance 

196 


YEARS    OF   MY   YOUTH 

of  escape  for  a  few  days  (it  was  in  the  John  Brown  year  of 
1859)  when  I  was  commissioned  to  celebrate  the  attrac 
tions  of  a  summer  resort  which  had  been  opened  a  few 
hours  away  from  the  capital.  I  had  heard  much  talk  of  the 
coolness  of  White  Sulphur,  as  it  was  called,  and  I  expected 
much  more  than  I  had  heard,  but  I  now  got  much  more 
than  I  had  expected. 

There  must  have  been  a  break  in  the  heat  when  at  some 
unearthly  hour  of  the  July  morning  I  had  taken  the  train 
which  would  leave  me  at  White  Sulphur,  but  in  the  sleep 
which  youth  can  almost  always  fall  into  I  was  not  sensible 
of  it.  I  say  fell  into,  but  I  slept  upright  as  one  did  on  the 
trains  in  those  times,  and  when  my  train  stopped  at  the 
station  which  as  yet  made  no  sign  of  being  a  station  I 
stumbled  down  the  car  steps  to  a  world  white  with  frost 
in  the  July  morning.  My  foot  slid  over  the  new  planking 
of  the  platform  as  on  ice,  and  on  the  way  up  to  the  new 
hotel  the  fences  bristled  with  the  glacial  particles  which 
bearded  the  limbs  of  the  wayside  trees,  and  the  stubble 
of  the  wheat  and  fields,  and  the  blades  of  the  corn,  and 
sparkled  in  the  red  of  the  early  sun  which  was  rising  to 
complete  the  devastation.  I  was  in  those  thinnest 
summer  linens,  with  no  provision  of  change  against  such 
an  incredible  caprice  of  the  weather,  and  when  I  reached 
the  hotel  there  was  no  fire  I  could  go  to  from  the  fresh, 
clean,  thrillingly  cold  chamber,  with  its  white  walls  and 
green  lattice  door,  which  I  was  shown  into.  No  detail  of 
the  time  remains  with  me  except  what  now  seems  to  have 
been  my  day-long  effort  to  keep  warm  by  playing  nine 
pins  with  a  Cincinnati  journalist,  much  my  senior,  but 
as  helpless  as  myself  against  the  cold.  There  must  have 
been  breakfast  and  dinner  and  supper,  with  their  momen 
tary  heat,  but  when  I  went  to  bed  I  found  only  the  lightest 
summer  provision  of  sheet  and  coverlet,  and  I  was  too 

meek  to  ask  for  blankets. 

197 


YEARS    OF    MY   YOUTH 

VI 

What  account  I  gave  of  the  experience  in  print  I  can 
not  say  after  the  lapse  of  fifty-seven  years,  but  no  doubt 
I  tried  to  make  merry  over  it,  with  endeavor  for  the 
picturesque  and  dramatic.  Through  the  whole  of  a  life 
which  I  do  not  complain  of  for  lasting  so  long,  though 
I  do  not  like  being  old,  I  have  found  that  in  my  experi 
ences,  where  everything  was  novel,  some  of  the  worst 
things  were  the  things  I  would  not  have  missed.  It  had 
not  been  strictly  in  the  line  of  my  duty  as  news  editor 
to  make  that  excursion,  but  I  dare  say  I  did  it  gladly, 
for  the  reasons  suggested.  There  were  other  reasons 
which  were  to  make  themselves  apparent  during  the 
year:  on  my  salary  of  ten  dollars  a  week  I  could  not 
afford  to  be  very  punctilious;  and  if  I  was  suffered  to 
stray  into  the  leading  columns  of  the  editorial  page  I 
could  not  stand  upon  the  dignity  of  the  news  editor  if 
I  was  now  and  then  invited  to  do  a  reporter's  work. 
Besides,  there  were  tremors  of  insecurity  in  my  position, 
such  as  came  from  the  bookkeeper's  difficulty  in  some 
times  finding  the  money  for  my  weekly  wage,  which 
might  well  have  alarmed  me  for  the  continued  working  of 
the  economic  machine.  Like  every  man  who  depends 
upon  the  will  or  power  of  another  man  to  give  him  work, 
I  served  a  master,  and  though  I  served  the  kindest  master 
in  the  world,  I  could  not  help  sharing  his  risks.  It  ap 
peared  that  our  newspaper  had  not  been  re-established 
upon  a  foundation  so  firm  but  that  it  needed  new  capital 
to  prop  it,  after  something  over  a  year,  and  then  a  business 
change  took  place  which  left  me  out.  I  was  not  altogether 
sorry,  for  about  the  same  time  my  senior  resigned  and 
went  to  Cincinnati  to  cast  in  his  fortunes  as  joint  owner 
and  editor  with  another  paper.  Without  him,  though  I 

should  have  fearlessly  undertaken  the  entire  conduct  of 

198 


YEARS    OF    MY    YOUTH 

our  journal,  I  should  not  have  felt  so  much  at  home  in  it, 
for  I  did  not  know  then,  as  I  have  learned  and  said  long 
since,  that  a  strong  writer,  when  he  leaves  a  newspaper, 
leaves  a  subtle  force  behind  him  which  keeps  him  in 
definitely  present  in  it.  But  there  was  no  question  of 
my  staying,  and  though  my  chief's  wish  to  have  me  stay 
almost  made  it  seem  as  if  I  were  staying,  I  had  to  go, 
and  I  had  to  leave  him  my  debtor  in  two  hundred  dollars. 
I  hasten  to  say  that  the  debt  was  fully  paid  in  no  very 
long  time,  but  it  seems  to  me  that  the  world  was  man 
aged  much  less  on  a  cash  basis  in  those  days  than  in 
these;  people  did  not  expect  to  be  paid  their  money 
as  soon  as  they  had  earned  it;  the  economic  machine 
creaked  and  wabbled  oftener,  and  had  to  be  sprinkled 
with  cool  patience  when  the  joints  worked  dry  of  oil. 
This  may  be  my  fancy,  partly  built  from  the  fact  that  my 
father  in  his  life  of  hard  work  was  nearly  lifelong  in  debt, 
while  others  lived  and  died  as  many  dollars  in  debt  to  him. 
It  must  have  been  before  this  humiliating  event,  which 
I  cannot  exactly  date,  that  I  was  asked  to  deliver  the  poem 
before  the  Ohio  Editorial  Convention  which  used  annually 
to  grace  its  meeting  with  some  expression  in  verse.  There 
must  have  been  an  opening  prayer  and  an  address,  but 
I  remember  neither  of  these,  and  I  should  not  be  able  to 
remember  my  poem,  or  any  part  of  it,  if  it  had  not  after 
ward  been  printed  in  our  newspaper,  from  which  the 
kindness  of  a  friend  has  rescued  it  for  me.  I  have  just 
read  it  over,  not  wholly  with  contempt,  but  not  without 
compassion  for  those  other  editors  who  listened  to  it  and 
could  have  followed  its  proud  vaticinations  but  darkly. 
It  appears  that  I  then  trusted  the  promises  of  a  journalis 
tic  future  which  have  not  all  been  kept  as  yet,  and  that 
I  cast  my  prophecies  in  a  form  and  mood  which  I  might 
have  accused  Tennyson  of  imitating  if  he  had  not  been 
first  with  his  "In  Memoriam." 
14  199 


YEARS    OF    MY    YOUTH 

The  Men  that  make  the  vanished  past 
So  brave,  the  present  time  so  base, 
And  people,  with  their  glorious  race, 

The  golden  future,  far  and  vast! — 

All  ages  have  been  dark  to  these, 
The  true  Knights  Errant!    who  have  done 
Their  high  achievements  not  alone 

In  the  remoter  centuries; 

But  ever  to  their  dawn's  dim  eye, 
Blinded  with  night-long  sorcery, 
Warring  with  Shadows  seemed  to  be, — 

In  victory,  seemed  to  fall  and  die! 

Noons  glowed.    The  poet  held  each  name 

In  hushless  music  to  the  ear — 

Low  for  the  thinking  few  to  hear, 
Loud  for  the  noisy  world's  acclaim; 

And  pondering,  one  that  turns  the  page 
Whereon  their  story  hath  been  writ, 
Gathers  a  purer  lore  from  it, 

Than  all  the  wisdom  of  the  sage; — 

A  simple  lore  of  trust  and  faith 

For  Life's  fierce  days  of  dust  and  heat, — 
To  keep  the  heart  of  boyhood  sweet 

Through  every  passion,  unto  death — 

To  love  and  reverence  his  time, 
Not  for  its  surface-growth  of  weeds, 
But  for  its  goodly  buried  seeds, — 

To  hope,  and  weave  a  hopeful  rhyme! 

The  vision  does  not  seem  very  clear  even  to  me,  now, 
and  I  suppose  not  many  of  those  kind,  hard-working 
country  printers  and  busy  city  journalists  recognized 

themselves  in  my  forecast  of  the  coming  newspaper  man. 

200 


YEARS    OF    MY    YOUTH 

Yet  I  think  there  is  something  in  the  glowing  fancy 
which  is  here  reflected  only  in  part,  and  I  believe  some 
graduate  of  our  university  courses  of  journalism  may 
possibly  do  worse  than  keep  my  fond  dream  in  mind. 
In  this  case,  the  yawning  counting-room  may  not  so  soon 
engulf  his  high  intentions,  and,  keeping  clear  of  that  shin 
ing  sepulcher  of  noble  ideals  for  a  while,  he  may  thank 
me  for  my  over-generous  faith  in  him. 

No  one  that  I  can  recall  specifically  thanked  me  at 
the  time  of  that  editorial  convention,  though  no  doubt 
the  usual  resolutions  thanking  the  orator  and  poet  were 
passed.  I  should  be  glad  to  believe  that  at  the  ball 
which  crowned  our  festival  some  kind  woman-soul  may 
have  tried  to  feign  a  pleasure  in  my  verse  which  no  man- 
soul  attempted;  but  I  have  only  the  memory  of  my 
fearful  joy  in  the  dance  which  I  seem  to  have  led.  I 
went  back  to  Columbus  with  such  heart  as  I  could, 
but  in  the  dense  foreshortening  of  the  time's  events  I 
cannot  find  that  of  my  own  unhorsing  from  the  shin 
ing  procession  of  journalists  figured  in  my  poem.  I 
can  only  be  sure  that  I  was  unhorsed,  and  then  suddenly, 
to  my  great  joy  and  even  greater  surprise,  was  caught 
up  and  given  a  new  mount,  with  even  larger  pay.  That 
is,  I  was  now  invited  to  become  professional  reader  for 
the  young  publisher  who  had  issued  the  Poems  of  Two 
Friends,  and  who,  apparently  inspired  by  the  signal 
failure  of  that  book,  imagined  establishing  a  general  pub 
lishing  business  in  our  capital.  He  followed  it  with 
several  very  creditable  books,  and  he  seems  to  have  had 
the  offer  of  many  more  manuscripts  than  he  could  handle. 
I  have  no  doubt  I  dealt  faithfully  with  these,  and  I  know 
that  he  confided  entirely  in  my  judgment,  for  I  was  now 
twenty-three,  without  a  doubt  of  my  own  as  to  my  com 
petence.  There  was  one  manuscript,  offered  by  a  lady 

who  had  lived  some  years  in  Chile,  which  I  thought  so 

201 


YEARS    OF    MY    YOUTH 

interesting,  though  so  formless,  that  I  wrote  it  quite 
over,  and  my  friend  published  it  in  a  book  which  I  should 
like  to  read  again;  but  I  have  no  hope  of  ever  seeing  it. 
He  also  published  a  very  good  Ohio  version  of  Gautier's 
Romance  of  a  Mummy,  but  our  bravest  venture  was  a 
book  which  the  publisher  himself  had  fancied  doing,  and 
which  he  had  fancied  my  writing.  This  was  the  life 
of  Abraham  Lincoln,  printed  with  his  speeches  in  the  same 
volume  with  the  life  and  speeches  of  Hannibal  Ham- 
lin,  who  was  nominated  with  him  on  the  Presidential 
ticket  at  the  Republican  Convention  in  1860.  It  was 
the  expectation  of  my  friend,  the  very  just  and  reasonable 
expectation,  that  I  should  go  to  Springfield,  Illinois,  and 
gather  the  material  for  the  work  from  Lincoln  himself, 
and  from  his  friends  and  neighbors.  But  this  part  of 
the  project  was  distasteful  to  me,  was  impossible;  I  felt 
that  there  was  nothing  of  the  interviewer  in  me,  at  a 
time  when  the  interviewer  was  not  yet  known  by  name 
even  to  himself.  Not  the  most  prophetic  soul  of  the 
time,  not  the  wisest  observer  of  events,  could  have  divined 
my  loss;  and  I  was  no  seer.  I  would  not  go,  and  I 
missed  the  greatest  chance  of  my  life  in  its  kind,  though 
I  am  not  sure  I  was  wholly  wrong,  for  I  might  not  have 
been  equal  to  that  chance;  I  might  not  have  seemed  to 
the  man  whom  I  would  not  go  to  see,  the  person  to  report 
him  to  the  world  in  a  campaign  life.  What  we  did  was 
to  commission  a  young  law  student  of  those  I  knew,  to 
go  to  Springfield  and  get  the  material  for  me.  When  he 
brought  it  back,  a  sheaf  of  very  admirable  notes,  but 
by  no  means  great  in  quantity,  I  felt  the  charm  of  the 
material;  the  wild  poetry  of  its  reality  was  not  unknown 
to  me;  I  was  at  home  with  it,  for  I  had  known  the  be 
lated  backwoods  of  a  certain  region  in  Ohio;  I  had 
almost  lived  the  pioneer  life;  and  I  wrote  the  little  book 

with  none  of  the  reluctance  I  felt  from  studying  its  sources, 

202 


YEARS    OF    MY    YOUTH 

I  will  not  pretend  that  I  had  any  prescience  of  the  great 
ness,  the  tragical  immortality,  that  underlay  the  few 
simple,  mostly  humble,  facts  brought  to  my  hand.  Those 
who  see  that  unique  historic  figure  in  the  retrospect 
will  easily  blame  my  youthful  blindness,  but  those  who 
only  knew  his  life  before  he  overtopped  all  the  history 
of  his  time  will  not  be  so  ready  to  censure  me  for  my 
want  of  forecast.  As  it  was,  I  felt  the  inadequacy  of 
my  work,  and  I  regretted  it  in  the  preface  which  owned 
its  hasty  performance. 

There  were  several  campaign  lives  of  Lincoln  which 
must  have  seemed  better  than  mine  to  him;  I  cannot  care 
now  how  it  seemed  to  others;  but  what  he  thought  of  it 
I  never  knew.  Within  a  few  years  I  have  heard  that  he 
annotated  a  copy  of  it,  and  that  this  copy  is  still  some 
where  extant  in  the  West;  but  I  am  not  certain  that  I 
should  like  to  see  it,  much  as  my  curiosity  is  concerning 
it.  He  might,  he  must,  have  said  some  things  which 
could  not  console  me  for  missing  that  great  chance  of  my 
life  when  I  was  too  young  to  know  it.  I  saw  him  twice 
in  Columbus,  as  I  have  told  here  already,  and  once  in 
Washington,  as  I  have  told  elsewhere.  That  was  when 
I  came  from  the  office  of  his  private  secretaries  at  the 
White  House,  secure  of  my  appointment  as  Consul  at 
Venice,  and  lingered  wistfully  as  he  crossed  my  way 
through  the  corridor.  Within  no  very  long  time  past 
my  old  friend  Piatt  (he  of  the  Poems  of  Two  Friends)  has 
told  me  that  Lincoln  then  meant  me  to  speak  to  him, 
as  I  might  very  fitly  have  done,  in  thanking  him  for  my 
appointment,  and  that  he  had  followed  me  out  from  the 
secretaries'  room  to  let  me  do  so.  He  might  have  had 
some  faint  promptings  of  curiosity  concerning  the  queer 
youth  who  had  written  that  life  of  him  from  material 
which  he  would  not  come  to  him  for  in  person.  But 
without  doubting  my  friend,  I  doubt  the  fact;  neither 

203 


YEARS    OF    MY    YOUTH 

Hay  nor  Nicolay  ever  mentioned  the  matter  to  me  in 
our  many  talks  of  Lincoln;  and  I  cannot  flatter  myself 
that  I  missed  another  greatest  chance  of  my  life.  Rather, 
I  imagine  that  he  did  not  know  who  I  was,  or  could  in  the 
least  care,  under  the  burdens  which  then  weighed  upon 
him.  He  might  have  suspected  me  an  office-seeker 
without  the  courage  to  approach  him  instead  of  the  office- 
seeker  whose  hopes  he  had,  very  likely  without  vividly 
realizing  it,  crowned  with  joy.  I  blame  myself  for  not 
speaking  to  him,  of  course,  as  I  blame  myself  for  not 
having  gone  to  him  instead  of  sending  to  him  for  the 
facts  of  his  past;  in  any  event,  with  my  literary  sense, 
I  must  have  valued  those  facts;  but  if  Lincoln  had  not 
been  elected  in  1860  he  would  not  have  been  nominated 
again;  and  in  that  case  should  I  now  be  reproaching  my 
self  so  bitterly? 


VII 

Another  fame  so  akin  to  Lincoln's  in  tragedy,  and  most 
worthy  of  mention  in  the  story  of  his  great  time,  is  that  of 
a  state  senator  of  ours  in  the  legislative  session  of  1860. 
James  A.  Garfield,  of  whose  coming  to  read  Tennyson  to 
us  one  morning  in  the  Journal  office  I  have  told  in  My 
Literary  Passions,  was  then  a  very  handsome  young  man  of 
thirty,  with  a  full-bearded  handsome  face,  and  a  rich  voice 
suited  to  reading  "The  Poet"  in  a  way  to  win  even  reluc 
tant  editors  from  their  work  to  listen.  It  is  strange  that  I 
should  have  no  recollection  of  meeting  Garfield  again  in 
Columbus,  or  anywhere,  indeed,  until  nearly  ten  years 
later,  when  I  stopped  with  my  father  over  a  night  at  his 
house  in  Hiram,  Ohio,  where  we  found  him  at  home  from 
Congress  for  the  summer.  I  was  then  living  in  Cambridge, 
in  the  fullness  of  my  content  with  my  literary  circum 
stance,  and  as  we  were  sitting  with  the  Garfield  family  on 

204 


YEARS    OF    MY    YOUTH 

the  veranda  that  overlooked  their  lawn  I  was  beginning  to 
speak  of  the  famous  poets  I  knew  when  Garfield  stopped 
me  with  "Just  a  minute!"  He  ran  down  into  the  grassy 
space,  first  to  one  fence  and  then  to  the  other  at  the  sides, 
and  waved  a  wild  arm  of  invitation  to  the  neighbors  who 
were  also  sitting  on  their  back  porches.  "Come  over 
here!"  he  shouted.  "He's  telling  about  Holmes,  and 
Longfellow,  and  Lowell,  and  Whittier!"  and  at  his  bidding 
dim  forms  began  to  mount  the  fences  and  follow  him  up 
to  his  veranda.  "Now  go  on!"  he  called  to  me,  when 
we  were  all  seated,  and  I  went  on,  while  the  whippoorwills 
whirred  and  whistled  round,  and  the  hours  drew  toward 
midnight.  The  neighbors  must  have  been  professors  in 
the  Eclectic  Institute  of  Hiram  where  Garfield  himself 
had  once  taught  the  ancient  languages  and  literature;  and 
I  do  not  see  how  a  sweeter  homage  could  have  been  paid 
to  the  great  renowns  I  was  chanting  so  eagerly,  and  I 
still  think  it  a  pity  my  poets  could  not  have  somehow 
eavesdropped  that  beautiful  devotion.  Under  the  spell 
of  those  inarticulate  voices  the  talk  sank  away  from  letters 
and  the  men  of  them  and  began  to  be  the  expression  of 
intimate  and  mystical  experience;  and  I  remember 
Garfield's  telling  how  in  the  cool  of  a  summer  evening, 
such  as  this  night  had  deepened  from,  he  came  with  his 
command  into  a  valley  of  the  Kanawha;  for  he  had  quickly 
turned  from  laws  to  arms,  and  this  was  in  the  beginning 
of  the  great  war.  He  said  that  he  noticed  a  number  of 
men  lying  on  the  dewy  meadow  in  different  shapes  of 
sleep,  and  for  an  instant,  in  the  inveterate  association 
of  peace,  he  thought  they  were  resting  there  after 
the  fatigue  of  a  long  day's  march.  Suddenly  it  broke 
upon  him  that  they  were  dead,  and  that  they  had  been 
killed  in  the  skirmish  which  had  left  the  Unionist  force 
victors.  Then,  he  said,  at  the  sight  of  these  dead  men 
whom  other  men  had  killed,  something  went  out  of  him, 

205 


YEARS    OF    MY    YOUTH 

the  habit  of  his  lifetime,  that  never  came  back  again: 
the  sense  of  the  sacredness  of  life,  and  the  impossibility 
of  destroying  it.  He  let  a  silence  follow  on  his  solemn 
words,  and  in  the  leading  of  his  confession  he  went  on  to 
say  how  the  sense  of  the  sacredness  of  other  things  of 
peace  had  gone  out  of  some  of  the  soldiers  and  never 
come  back  again.  What  was  not  their  own  could  be 
made  their  own  by  the  act  of  taking  it;  and  he  said 
we  would  all  be  surprised  to  know  how  often  the  property 
of  others  had  been  treated  after  the  war  as  if  it  were  the 
property  of  public  enemies  by  the  simple-hearted  fellows 
who  had  carried  the  use  of  war  in  the  enemy's  country 
back  into  their  own.  "You  would  be  surprised,"  he 
ended,  "to  know  how  many  of  those  old  soldiers,  who 
fought  bravely  and  lived  according  to  the  traditions  of 
military  necessity,  are  now  in  the  penitentiary  for  horse- 
stealing." 

Once  again  I  memorably  met  Garfield  in  my  father's 
house  in  Ashtabula  County  (the  strong  heart  of  his 
most  Republican  Congressional  district)  where  he  had 
come  to  see  me  about  some  passages  in  Lamon's  Life 
of  Lincoln,  which  was  then  in  the  hands  of  my  Boston 
publishers,  withheld  in  their  doubt  of  the  wisdom  or 
propriety  of  including  them.  I  think  Garfield  was  then 
somewhat  tempted  by  the  dramatic  effect  these  passages 
would  have  with  the  public,  but  he  was  not  strenuous 
about  it,  and  he  yielded  whatever  authority  he  might 
have  had  in  the  matter  to  the  misgiving  of  the  publishers; 
in  fact,  I  do  not  believe  that  if  it  had  been  left  to  him 
altogether  he  would  have  advised  their  appearance.  I 
met  him  for  the  last  time  in  1879  (when  my  wife  and  I 
were  for  a  week  the  guests  of  President  Hayes),  as  he  was 
coming,  with  Mrs.  Garfield  on  his  arm,  from  calling  upon 
us  at  the  White  House.  He  stopped  me  and  said,  "I 

was  thinking  how  much  like  your  father  you  carried 

206 


YEARS    OF    MY    YOUTH 

yourself,"  and  I  knew  that  he  spoke  from  the  affection 
which  had  been  many  years  between  them.  I  was  yet  too 
young  to  feel  the  resemblance,  but  how  often  in  my  later 
years  I  have  felt  and  seen  it!  As  we  draw  nearer  to  the 
door  between  this  world  and  the  next  it  is  as  if  those  who 
went  before  us  returned  to  us  out  of  it  to  claim  us  part 
of  them. 

VIII 

I  never  had  any  report  of  the  book's  sales,  but  I  believe 
my  Life  of  Lincoln  sold  very  well  in  the  West,  though  in 
the  East  it  was  forestalled  by  the  books  of  writers  better 
known.  In  the  quiet  which  followed  with  a  business 
which  is  always  tending  to  quiescence  (if  the  mood  of 
the  trade  when  discouraging  authors  may  be  trusted) 
my  young  publisher  suggested  my  taking  one  hundred 
and  seventy-five  dollars  of  my  money,  and  going  to  Canada 
and  New  England  and  New  York  on  a  sort  of  roving 
commission  for  another  work  he  had  imagined.  It 
was  to  be  a  subscription  book  reporting  the  state  and 
describing  the  operation  of  the  principal  manufacturing 
industries,  and  he  thought  it  an  enterprise  peculiarly 
suited  to  my  powers.  I  did  not  think  so,  but  I  was  eager 
to  see  the  world,  especially  the  world  of  Boston,  and 
I  gladly  took  my  hundred  and  seventy-five  dollars  and 
started,  intending  to  do  my  best  for  the  enterprise, 
though  inwardly  abhorring  it.  The  best  I  could  do  was 
to  try  seeing  the  inner  working  of  an  iron  foundry  in 
Portland,  where  I  was  suspected  of  designs  upon  the 
proprietorial  processes  and  refused  admission;  and  I 
made  no  attempt  to  surprise  the  secrets  of  other  manu 
facturers.  But  I  saw  Niagara  Falls,  which  did  not  with 
hold  its  glories  from  me  in  fear  of  the  publicity  which 
I  gave  them  in  my  letters  to  the  Cincinnati  Gazette;  and, 

207 


YEARS    OF    MY    YOUTH 

I  saw  the  St.  Lawrence  River  and  Montreal  and  Quebec, 
with  the  habitant  villages  round  about  them.  I  also 
saw  the  ocean  at  Portland  (not  so  jealous  of  its  mysteries 
as  the  iron  foundry);  I  saw  Boston  and  Cambridge, 
and  Lowell  and  Holmes,  and  their  publisher,  Fields; 
I  saw  New  York  and  Walt  Whitman  and  the  Hudson 
River.  This  has  been  fully  told  in  my  Literary  Friends 
and  Acquaintance,  and  need  not  be  told  again  here; 
but  what  may  be  fittingly  set  down  is  that  when  I  ar 
rived  home  in  Columbus  I  found  the  publishing  business 
still  quieter  than  I  had  left  it,  and  my  friend  with  no 
enterprise  in  hand  which  I  could  help  him  bring  to  a 
successful  or  even  unsuccessful  issue.  In  fact  he  had 
nothing  for  me  to  do  in  that  hour  of  mounting  political 
excitement,  and  this  did  not  surprise  me.  Neither  did  it 
surprise  me  that  my  old  chief  of  the  State  Journal  should 
ask  me  to  rejoin  him,  though  it  did  greatly  rejoice  me. 
He  was  yet  in  that  kind  illusion  of  his  that  he  was  working 
too  hard  on  the  paper;  he  expressed  his  fear  that  in  the 
demand  made  upon  his  time  by  public  affairs  he  should 
not  be  able  to  give  it  the  attention  he  would  like,  and 
he  proposed  that  I  should  return  to  a  wider  field  in  it,  on 
an  increased  wage;  he  also  intimated  that  he  should  now 
be  able  to  bring  up  my  arrears  of  salary,  and  he  quite 
presently  did  so. 

Again  I  was  at  the  work  which  I  was  always  so  happy 
in,  and  I  found  myself  associated  in  it  on  equal  terms 
with  a  man  much  nearer  my  own  age  than  my  former 
associate  Reed  was.  My  new  fellow-journalist  had  come 
to  our  chief  from  his  own  region  in  northwestern  Ohio; 
I  do  not  know  but  from  his  old  newspaper  there.  I 
cannot  write  the  name  of  Samuel  Price  without  emotion, 
so  much  did  I  rejoice  in  our  relation  to  the  paper  and 
each  other,  with  its  daily  incident  and  bizarre  excitement 

throughout  the  year  we  were  together.     I  like  to  bring 

208 


YEARS    OF    MY    YOUTH 

his  looks  before  me;  his  long  face  with  its  deep,  vertical 
lines  beside  the  mouth,  his  black  hair  and  eyes  and  smoky 
complexion;  his  air  very  grave  mostly,  but  with  an 
eager  readiness  to  break  into  laughter.  It  seems  to  me 
now  that  our  functions  were  not  very  sharply  distin 
guished,  though  I  must  have  had  charge  as  before  of  the 
literary  side  of  the  work.  We  both  wrote  leading  edit 
orials,  which  our  chief  supervised  and  censored  for  a  while 
and  then  let  go  as  we  wrote  them,  perhaps  finding  no 
great  mischief  in  them.  Reed  remained  the  tradition 
of  the  office,  and  if  I  had  formed  myself  somewhat  on  his 
mood  and  manner,  Price  now  formed  himself  on  mine; 
and  somehow  we  carried  the  paper  through  the  year 
without  dishonor  or  disaster. 

It  was  that  year  so  memorable  to  me  for  having  five 
poems  published  in  the  Atlantic  Monthly,  two  of  them 
in  the  same  number,  and  I  must  have  been  strongly 
confirmed  in  my  purpose  of  being  a  poet.  Of  course  I 
knew  too  much  of  the  world,  and  the  literary  world, 
to  imagine  that  I  could  at  once  make  a  living  by  poetry, 
but  I  probably  expected  to  live  by  some  other  work  until 
my  volumes  of  poetry  should  accumulate  in  sufficient 
number  and  sell  in  sufficient  quantity  to  support  me 
without  the  aid  of  prose.  As  yet  I  had  no  expectation  of 
writing  fiction;  I  had  not  recovered  from  the  all-but- 
mortal  blow  dealt  my  hopes  in  the  failure  of  that  story 
which  I  had  begun  printing  in  my  father's  newspaper 
before  I  had  imagined  an  ending  for  it,  though  I  must 
for  several  years  have  been  working  in  stolen  moments 
at  another  story  of  village  life,  which  I  vainly  offered  to 
the  Atlantic  Monthly  and  the  Knickerbocker  Magazine, 
and  after  that  for  many  years  tried  to  get  some  publisher 
to  bring  out  as  a  book.  The  manuscript  must  still  some 
where  exist,  and  I  should  not  be  surprised,  if  I  ever  found 
it,  to  find  myself  respecting  it  for  a  certain  helpless 

209 


YEARS    OF    MY    YOUTH 

reality  in  its  dealing  with  the  conditions  I  knew  best  when 
I  began  writing  it.  But  it  was  still  to  be  nearly  ten  years 
before  I  tried  anything  else  of  the  sort,  and  even  in  Their 
Wedding  Journey,  which  was  my  next  attempt,  I  helped 
myself  out  with  travel-adventure  in  carrying  forward  a 
slender  thread  of  narrative.  Every  now  and  then,  how 
ever,  I  wrote  some  sketch  or  study,  which  I  printed  in 
our  newspaper,  where  also  I  printed  pieces  of  verse,  too 
careless  or  too  slight  to  be  hopefully  offered  for  publica 
tion  in  the  East. 


IX 

I  was  not  only  again  at  congenial  work,  but  I  was  in  the 
place  that  I  loved  best  in  the  world,  though  as  well  as  I 
can  now  visualize  the  town  which  had  so  great  charm  for 
me  then  I  can  find  little  beauty  in  it.  High  Street  was 
the  only  street  of  commerce  except  for  a  few  shops  that 
had  strayed  down  from  it  into  Town  Street,  and  the 
buildings  which  housed  the  commerce  were  not  impressive, 
and  certainly  not  beautiful.  A  few  hotels,  three  or  four, 
broke  the  line  of  stores;  there  was  the  famous  restaurant  of 
^Ambos,  and  some  Jewish  clothiers;  but  above  all,  besides 
a  music  and  picture  store,  there  was  an  excellent  book 
store,  where  I  supplied  myself  from  a  good  stock  of  Ger 
man  books,  with  Heine  and  Schiller  and  Uhland,  and 
where  one  could  find  all  the  new  publications.  The 
streets  of  dwellings  stretched  from  High  Street  to  the 
right,  over  a  practically  interminable  plain,  and  shorter 
streets  on  the  left  dropped  to  the  banks  of  the  Scioto 
where  a  lower  level  emulated  the  inoffensive  unpictu- 
resqueness  of  the  other  plain.  A  dusty  bridge  crossed  the 
river,  where  in  the  slack-water  ordinarily  drowsed  a 
flock  of  canal-boats  which  came  and  went  on  the  Ohio 
Canal.  Some  old-fashioned,  dignified  dwellings  stood 

210 


YEARS    OF    MY    YOUTH 

at  the  northern  end  of  High  Street,  with  the  country  close 
beyond,  but  the  houses  which  I  chiefly  knew  were  on 
those  other  streets.  I  cannot  say  now  whether  they 
added  to  the  beauty  of  the  avenues  or  not;  I  suppose 
that  oftenest  they  did  not  embellish  them  architecturally, 
though  they  were  set  in  wide  grounds  among  pleasant 
lawns  and  gardens.  The  young  caller  knew  best  their 
parlors  in  winter  and  their  porches  in  summer;  there 
was  little  or  no  lunching  or  dining  for  any  one  except  as  a 
guest  of  pot-luck;  and  the  provisioning  was  mainly,  if 
not  wholly,  from  the  great  public  market.  Greengrocers' 
and  butchers'  shops  there  were  none,  but  that  public 
market  was  of  a  sumptuous  variety  and  abundance,  as  I 
can  testify  from  a  visit  paid  it  with  a  householding  friend 
who  drove  to  it  in  his  carriage,  terribly  long  before  break 
fast,  and  provisioned  himself  among  the  other  fathers 
and  the  mothers  who  thronged  the  place  with  their  market- 
baskets.  This  was  years  after  my  last  years  in  Columbus, 
when  I  was  a  passing  guest;  while  I  lived  there  I  was 
citizen  of  a  world  that  knew  no  such  household  cares  'or 
joys. 

On  my  return  from  my  travels,  though  I  was  so  glad 
to  be  again  in  Columbus,  I  no  longer  gave  myself  up  to 
society  with  such  abandon  as  before.  I  kept  mostly  to 
those  two  houses  where  I  was  most  intimate,  and  in  my 
greater  devotion  to  literature  I  omitted  to  make  the  calls 
which  were  necessary  to  keep  one  in  society  even  in  a 
place  so  unexacting  as  our  capital.  Somewhat  to  my 
surprise,  somewhat  more  to  my  pain,  I  found  that  society 
knew  how  to  make  reprisals  for  such  neglect;  I  heard  of 
parties  which  I  was  not  asked  to,  and  though  I  might 
not  have  gone  to  them,  I  suffered  from  not  being  asked. 
Only  in  one  case  did  I  regret  my  loss  very  keenly,  and 
that  was  at  a  house  where  Lincoln's  young  private  sec 
retaries,  Hay  and  Nicolay,  passing  through  to  Washington 

2H 


YEARS    OF    MY    YOUTH 

before  the  inauguration,  had  asked  for  me.  They  knew 
of  me  as  the  author  of  "The  Pilot's  Story"  and  my  other 
poems  in  the  Atlantic  Monthly,  as  well  as  that  campaign 
life  of  Lincoln  which  I  should  not  have  prided  myself  on 
so  much;  but  I  had  been  justly  ignored  by  the  hostess 
in  her  invitations,  and  they  asked  in  vain.  I  fully  shared 
after  the  fact  any  disappointment  they  may  have  felt, 
but  I  doubt  if  I  was  afterward  more  constant  in  my  social 
duties;  I  was  intending  more  and  more  to  devote  myself 
to  poetry,  and  with  a  hand  freer  than  ever,  if  that 
were  possible,  in  the  newspaper,  I  was  again  feeling  the 
charm  of  journalism,  and  was  giving  to  it  the  nights 
which  I  used  to  give  to  calls  and  parties. 

I  did  not  go  back  to  live  in  the  College,  but  with  Price 
I  took  a  room  and  furnished  it;  we  went  together  for  our 
meals  to  the  different  restaurants,  a  sort  of.  life  more  con 
formable  to  my  notion  of  the  life  of  the  literary  free 
lance  in  New  York.  But  let  not  the  reader  suppose  from 
this  large  way  of  speaking  that  there  were  many  res 
taurants  in  Columbus,  or  much  choice  in  them.  The 
best,  the  only  really  good  one,  was  that  of  Ambos  in 
High  Street,  where,  as  I  have  said  before,  we  silvern 
youth  resorted  sometimes  for  the  midnight  oyster,  which 
in  handsome  half-dozens  was  brought  us  on  chafing- 
dishes,  to  be  stewed  over  spirit-lamps  and  flavored  accord 
ing  to  our  taste  with  milk  and  butter.  We  cooked  them 
for  ourselves,  but  our  rejected,  or  protested,  Clive  New- 
come  was  the  most  skilled  in  an  oyster  stew,  and  we  all 
emulated  him  as  we  sat  at  the  marble  table  in  one  of  the 
booths  at  the  side  of  the  room.  In  hot  weather  a  claret 
punch  sometimes  crowned  the  night  with  a  fearful  joy, 
and  there  was  something  more  than  bacchanalian  in  hav 
ing  it  brought  with  pieces  of  ice  clucking  in  a  pitcher 
borne  by  the  mystical  Antoine  from  the  bar  where  he 

had  mixed  it:    that  Antoine  whom  we  romanced  as  of 

212 


YEARS    OF    MY    YOUTH 

strange  experiences  and  recondite  qualities,  because  he 
was  of  such  impregnable  silence,  in  his  white  apron,  with 
his  face  white  above  it,  damp  with  a  perennial  perspiration, 
which  even  in  the  hottest  weather  did  not  quite  gather 
into  drops.  We  each  attempted  stories  of  him,  and 
somewhere  yet  I  have  among  my  manuscripts  of  that 
time  a  very  affected  study  done  in  the  spirit  and  manner 
of  the  last  author  I  had  been  reading. 

I  suppose  he  was  not  really  of  any  intrinsic  interest, 
but  if  he  had  been  of  the  greatest  I  could  not  have  af 
forded,  even  on  my  increased  salary,  to  resort  to  Ambos's 
for  frequent  observation  of  him.  Ambos's  was  the  luxury 
of  high  occasions,  and  Price  and  I  went  rather  for  our 
daily  fare  to  the  place  of  an  Americanized  German  near 
our  office,  where  the  cooking  was  very  good,  and  the  food 
without  stint  in  every  variety,  but  where  the  management 
was  of  such  an  easy  kind  that  the  rats  could  sometimes  be 
seen  clambering  over  the  wall  of  the  storeroom  beyond 
where  we  sat.  There  was  not  then  the  present  feeling 
against  those  animals,  which  were  respected  as  useful 
scavengers,  and  we  were  rather  amused  than  revolted 
by  them,  being  really  still  boys  with  boys'  love  of  bizarre 
and  ugly  things.  Once  we  had  for  our  guest  in  that  place 
the  unique  genius  destined  to  so  great  fame  as  Artemus 
Ward;  he  shared  our  interest  in  the  rats,  and  we  joked 
away  the  time  at  a  lunch  of  riotous  abundance;  I  should 
say  superabundance  if  we  had  found  it  too  much.  For  a 
while  also  we  ate  at  the  house  of  a  lady  who  set  a  table 
faultless  to  our  taste,  but  imagined  that  the  right  way  to 
eat  pie  was  with  a  knife,  and  never  gave  a  fork  with  it. 
Here  for  a  while  we  had  the  company  of  the  young  Cin 
cinnati  Gazette  correspondent,  Whitelaw  Reid,  joyful  like 
ourselves  under  the  cloud  gathering  over  our  happy  world. 
One  day,  after  the  cloud  had  passed  away  in  the  thunder 
and  lightning  of  the  four  years'  Civil  War,  he  came 

213 


YEARS   OF   MY    YOUTH 

radiant  to  my  little  house  at  Cambridge  with  a  piece  of 
news  which  I  found  it  as  difficult  to  realize  for  fact  in 
my  sympathy  with  him  as  he  could  have  wished.  "Just 
think!  Horace  Greeley  has  asked  me  to  be  managing 
editor  of  the  Tribune,  and  he  offers  me  six  thousand  dol 
lars  a  year!"  A  great  many  years  afterward  we  met  in  a 
train  coming  from  Boston  to  New  York,  when  he  brought 
the  talk  round  to  the  Spanish  War,  and,  for  whatever 
reason,  to  his  part  in  the  Treaty  of  Paris  and  the  pur 
chase  of  the  Philippines.  "7  did  that,"  he  said.  But 
I  could  not  congratulate  him  upon  this  as  I  did  upon 
his  coming  to  the  editorship  of  the  Tribune,  being  of  a 
different  mind  about  the  acquisition  of  the  Philippines. 


Sometime  during  that  winter  of  1860-61  Greeley  himself 
paid  us  a  visit  in  the  Journal  office  and  volunteered  a 
lecture  on  our  misconduct  of  the  paper,  which  he  found 
the  cause  of  its  often  infirmity.  We  listened  with  the 
inward  disrespect  which  youth  feels  for  the  uninvited 
censure  of  age,  but  with  the  outward  patience  due  the 
famous  journalist  (of  such  dim  fame  already!)  sitting  on 
the  corner  of  a  table,  with  his  soft  hat  and  his  long  white 
coat  on,  and  his  quaint  child-face,  spectacled  and  framed 
in  long  white  hair.  He  was  not  the  imposing  figure  which 
one  sees  him  in  history,  a  man  of  large,  rambling  ambi 
tions,  but  generous  ideals,  and  of  a  final  disappoint 
ment  so  tragical  that  it  must  devote  him  to  a  reverence 
which  success  could  never  have  won  him.  I  do  not  know 
what  errand  he  was  on  in  Columbus;  very  likely  it  was 
some  political  mission;  but  it  was  something  to  us  that 
he  had  read  the  Journal,  even  with  disapproval,  and  we 
did  not  dispute  his  judgments;  if  we  were  a  little  abashed 

214 


YEARS    OF   MY    YOUTH 

by  them  we  hardened  our  hearts  against  them,  whatever 
they  were,  and  kept  on  as  before,  for  our  consciences 
were  as  clear  as  our  hearts  were  light.  No  one  at  that 
time  really  knew  what  to  think  or  say,  the  wisest  lived 
from  day  to  day  under  the  gathering  cloud,  which  somehow 
they  expected  to  break  as  other  clouds  in  our  history 
had  broken;  when  the  worst  threatened  we  expected  the 
best. 

Price  was  not  the  companion  of  my  walks  so  much  as 
Reed  had  been;  he  was  probably  of  frailer  health  than  I 
noticed,  for  he  died  a  few  years  later;  and  I  had  oftener 
the  company  of  a  young  man  who  interested  me  more 
intensely.  This  was  the  great  sculptor,  J.  Q.  A.  Ward,  who 
had  come  to  the  capital  of  his  native  state  in  the  hope  of 
a  legislative  commission  for  a  statue  of  Simon  Kenton. 
It  was  a  hope  rather  than  a  scheme,  but  we  were  near 
enough  to  the  pioneer  period  for  the  members  to  be  moved 
by  the  sight  of  the  old  Indian  Fighter  in  his  hunting- 
shirt  and  squirrel-skin  cap,  whom  every  Ohio  boy  had 
heard  of,  and  Ward  was  provisionally  given  a  handsome 
room  with  a  good  light,  in  the  State  House,  where  he 
modeled  I  no  longer  know  what  figures,  and  perhaps 
an  enlargement  of  his  "Kenton."  There  I  used  to  visit 
him,  trying  to  imagine  something  of  art,  then  a  world 
so  wholly  strange  to  me,  and  talking  about  New  York 
and  the  aesthetic  life  of  the  metropolis.  My  hopes  did 
not  rise  so  high  as  Boston,  but  I  thought  if  I  were  ever 
unhorsed  again  I  might  find  myself  on  my  feet  in  New 
York,  though  I  felt  keenly  the  difference  between  the 
places,  greater  then  than  now,  when  literary  endeavor 
is  diffused  and  equally  commercialized  everywhere. 
Ward  seemed  to  live  much  to  himself  in  Columbus,  as  he 
always  did,  but  I  saw  a  great  deal  of  him,  for  in  the  com 
munity  of  youth  we  had  no  want  of  things  to  talk  about; 
we  could  always  talk  about  ourselves  when  there  was  noth- 
15  215 


YEARS    OF    MY    YOUTH 

ing  else.  He  was  in  the  prime  of  his  vigorous  manhood, 
with  a  fine  red  beard,  and  a  close-cropped  head  of  red 
hair,  like  Michelangelo,  and  a  flattened  nose  like  the 
Florentine's,  so  that  I  rejoiced  in  him  as  the  ideal  of  a 
sculptor.  I  still  think  him,  for  certain  Greek  qualities, 
the  greatest  of  American  sculptors;  his  "Indian  Hunter" 
in  Central  Park  must  bear  witness  of  our  historic  difference 
from  other  peoples  as  long  as  bronze  shall  last,  and  as  no 
other  sculpture  can.  But  the  "Kenton"  was  never  to  be 
eternized  in  bronze  or  marble  for  that  niche  in  the  ro 
tunda  of  the  capital  where  Ward  may  have  imagined  it 
finding  itself.  The  cloud  thickened  over  us,  and  burst  at 
last  in  the  shot  fired  on  Fort  Sumter;  the  legislature 
appropriated  a  million  dollars  as  the  contribution  of  the 
state  to  the  expenses  of  the  war,  and  Ward's  hopes  van 
ished  as  utterly  as  if  the  bolt  had  smitten  his  plaster 
model  into  dust. 

Before  Ward,  almost,  indeed,  with  my  first  coming  to 
Columbus,  there  had  been  another  sculptor  whom  I 
was  greatly  interested  to  know.  This  was  Thomas  D. 
Jones,  who  had  returned  to  Ohio  from  an  attempt  upon 
the  jealous  East,  where  he  had  suffered  that  want  of 
appreciation  which  was  apt,  in  a  prevalent  superstition 
of  the  West,  to  attend  any  aesthetic  endeavor  from  our 
section.  He  frankly  stood  for  the  West,  though  I  believe 
he  was  a  Welshman  by  birth;  but  in  spite  of  his  pose  he 
was  a  sculptor  of  real  talent.  He  modeled  a  bust  of  Chase, 
admirable  as  a  likeness,  and  of  a  very  dignified  simplicity. 
I  do  not  know  whether  it  was  ever  put  in  marble,  but  it 
was  put  in  plaster  very  promptly  and  sold  in  many  such 
replicas.  The  sculptor  liked  to  be  seen  modeling  it,  and 
I  can  see  him  yet,  stepping  back  a  little  from  his  work, 
and  then  advancing  upon  it  with  a  sensitive  twitching  of 
his  mustache  and  a  black  censorious  frown.  The  Governor 
must  have  posed  in  the  pleasant  room  which  Jones  had  in 

216 


YEARS    OF    MY    YOUTH 

the  Neil  House  where  he  lived,  how  I  do  not  know,  for  he 
was  threadbare  poor;  but  in  those  days  many  good  things 
seemed  without  price  to  the  debtor  class;  and  very  likely 
the  management  liked  to  have  him  there,  where  his  work 
attracted  people.  One  day  while  I  was  in  the  room  the 
Governor  came  in  and,  not  long  after,  a  lady  who  ap 
peared  instinctively  to  time  her  arrival  when  it  could  be 
most  largely  impressive.  As  she  was  staying  in  the  hotel, 
she  wore  nothing  on  her  dewily  disheveled  hair,  as  it  in 
sists  upon  characterizing  itself  in  the  retrospect,  and 
she  had  the  effect  of  moving  about  on  a  stage.  She  had, 
in  fact,  just  come  up  on  some  theatrical  wave  from  her 
native  Tennessee,  and  she  had  already  sent  her  album  of 
favorable  notices  to  the  Journal  office  with  the  appeal 
inscribed  in  a  massive  histrionic  hand,  "Anything  but 
your  silence,  gentlemen!"  She  played  a  short  engage 
ment  in  Columbus,  and  then  departed  for  the  East  and 
for  the  far  grander  capitals  of  the  Old  World,  where  she 
became  universally  famous  as  Ada  Isaacs  Menken,  and 
finally  by  a  stroke  of  her  fearless  imagination  figured  in 
print  as  the  bride  of  the  pugilist  Heenan,  then  winning  us 
the  laurels  of  the  ring  away  from  English  rivalry.  I 
cannot  recall,  with  all  my  passion  for  the  theater,  that  I 
saw  her  on  any  stage  but  that  which  for  a  moment 
she  made  of  the  sculptor's  room 

Jones  had  been  a  friend  from  much  earlier  days,  almost 
my  earliest  days  in  Columbus;  it  was  he  who  took  me  to 
that  German  house,  where  I  could  scarcely  gasp  for  the 
high  excitement  of  finding  myself  with  a  lady  who  had 
known  Heinrich  Heine  and  could  talk  of  him  as  if  he  were 
a  human  being.  I  had  not  become  a  hopeless  drunkard 
from  drinking  the  glass  of  eggnog  which  she  gave  me  while 
she  talked  familiarly  of  him,  and  when  after  several 
years  Jones  took  me  to  her  house  again  she  had  the  savoir 
faire  quite  to  ignore  the  interval  of  neglect  which  I  had 

217 


YEARS    OF    MY    YOUTH 

suffered  to  elapse,  and  gave  me  a  glass  of  eggnog  again. 
It  must  have  been  in  1859  that  Jones  vanished  from  my 
life,  but  I  must  not  let  him  take  with  him  a  friend  whose 
thoughtfulness  at  an  important  moment  I  still  feel. 

This  was  a  man  who  afterward  became  known  as  the 
author  of  two  curious  books,  entitled  Library  Notes,  made 
up  somewhat  in  the  discursive  fashion  of  Montaigne's 
essays,  out  of  readings  from  his  favorite  authors.  There 
was  nothing  original  in  them  except  the  taste  which  guided 
their  selection,  but  they  distinctly  gave  the  sort  of  pleas 
ure  he  had  in  compiling  them,  and  their  readers  will 
recall  with  affection  the  name  of  A.  P.  Russell.  He 
was  the  Ohio  Secretary  of  State  when  I  knew  him  first, 
and  he  knew  me  as  the  stripling  \vho  was  writing  in 
his  nonage  the  legislative  letters  of  the  Cincinnati  Gazette; 
and  he  alone  remembered  me  distinctly  enough  to  com 
mend  me  for  a  place  on  the  staff  of  the  State  Journal 
when  Mr.  Cooke  took  control  of  it.  After  the  war  he 
spent  several  years  in  some  financial  service  of  the  state 
in  New  York,  vividly  interested  in  the  greatness  of  a 
city  where,  as  he  was  fond  of  saying,  a  cannon-shot 
could  be  heard  by  eight  hundred  thousand  people;  six 
million  people  could  hear  it  now  if  anything  could  make 
itself  heard  above  the  multitudinous  noises  that  have 
multiplied  themselves  since.  When  his  term  of  office 
ended  he  returned  to  Ohio,  where  he  shunned  cities  great 
and  small,  and  retired  to  the  pleasant  town  where  he  was 
born,  like  an  Italian  to  his  patria,  and  there  ended  his 
peaceful,  useful  days.  It  was  my  good  fortune  in  almost 
the  last  of  these  days  to  write  and  tell  him  of  my  unfor- 
gotten  gratitude  for  that  essential  kindness  he  had  done 
me  so  long  before,  and  to  have  a  letter  back  from  him,  the 
more  touching  because  another's  hand  had  written  it; 
for  Russell  had  become  blind. 

Probably  he  had  tried  to  help  Ward  in  his  hope,  which 

218 


YEARS    OP   MY    YOUTH 

was  hardly  a  scheme,  for  that  appropriation  from  the 
legislature  for  his  "  Simon  Kenton."  They  always  re 
mained  friends,  and  during  Russell's  stay  in  New  York 
he  probably  saw  more  of  Ward,  so  often  sequestered  with 
the  horses  for  his  equestrian  groups,  than  most  of  his 
other  friends.  I  who  lived  quarter  of  a  century  in  the 
same  city  with  him  saw  him  seldom  by  that  fault  of  social 
indolence,  rather  than  indifference,  which  was  always 
mine,  and  which  grows  upon  one  with  the  years.  Once  I 
went  to  dine  with  him  in  the  little  room  off  his  great, 
yawning,  equine  studio,  and  to  have  him  tell  me  of  his 
life  for  use  in  a  book  of  "Ohio  Stories"  I  was  writing; 
then  some  swift  years  afterward  I  heard  casually  from 
another  friend  that  Ward  was  sick.  "  Would  he  be  out 
soon?"  I  asked.  "I  don't  think  he'll  be  out  at  all,"  I 
was  answered,  and  I  went  the  next  day  to  see  him.  He 
was  lying  with  his  fine  head  on  the  pillow  still  like  such  a 
head  of  Michelangelo  as  the  Florentine  might  have  mod 
eled  of  himself,  and  he  smiled  and  held  out  his  hand,  and 
had  me  sit  down.  We  talked  long  of  old  times,  of  old 
friends  and  enemies  (but  not  really  enemies),  and  it  was 
sweet  to  be  with  him  so.  He  seemed  so  very  like  himself 
that  it  was  hard  to  think  him  in  danger,  but  he  reminded 
us  who  were  there  that  he  was  seventy-nine  years  old,  and 
when  we  spoke  about  his  getting  well  and  soon  being 
out  again  he  smiled  in  the  wisdom  which  the  dying  have 
from  the  world  they  are  so  near,  and,  tenderly  patient 
of  us,  expressed  his  doubt.  In  a  few  days,  before  I  could 
go  again,  I  heard  that  he  was  dead. 


XI 


But  in  that  winter  of  1859-60,  after  Lincoln  had  been 
elected,  Ward  was  still  hopeful  of  an  order  from  the  state 

219 


YEARS    OF    MY    YOUTH 

for  his  "Simon  Kenton,"  and  I  was  hopeful  of  the  poetic 
pre-eminence  which  I  am  still  foregoing.  I  used  such 
scraps  of  time  as  I  could  filch  from  the  busy  days  and 
nights  and  gave  them  to  the  verse  which  now  seemed  to 
come  back  from  editors  oftener  than  it  once  did.  This 
hurt,  but  it  did  not  kill,  and  I  kept  on  at  verse  for  years  in 
the  delusion  that  it  was  my  calling  and  that  I  could  make 
it  my  living.  It  was  not  until  four  or  five  years  later 
that  a  more  practical  muse  persuaded  me  my  work  be 
longed  to  her,  and  in  the  measureless  leisure  of  my  Vene 
tian  consulate  I  began  to  do  the  various  things  in  prose 
which  I  have  mostly  been  doing  ever  since,  for  fifty  years 
past.  Till  then  I  had  no  real  leisure,  but  was  yet  far  from 
the  days  when  anything  less  than  a  day  seems  too  small  a 
space  to  attempt  anything  in.  That  is  the  mood  of  age 
and  of  middle  age,  but  youth  seizes  any  handful  of  minutes 
and  devotes  them  to  some  beginning  or  ending.  It  had 
been  my  habit  ever  since  I  took  up  journalism  to  use 
part  of  the  hour  I  had  for  midday  dinner  in  writing 
literature,  and  such  hours  of  the  night  as  were  left  me 
after  my  many  calls  or  parties;  and  now  I  did  not  change, 
even  under  the  stress  of  the  tragical  events  crowding 
upon  us  all. 

I  phrase  it  so,  but  really  I  felt  no  stress,  and  I  do 
not  believe  others  felt  it  so  much  as  the  reader  might 
think.  As  I  look  back  upon  it  the  whole  state  of  affairs 
seems  incredible,  and  to  a  generation  remote  from  it 
must  seem  impossible.  We  had  an  entire  section  of  the 
Republic  openly  seeking  its  dismemberment,  and  a  govern 
ment  which  permitted  and  even  abetted  the  seizure  of 
national  property  by  its  enemies  and  the  devotion  of  its 
resources  to  its  own  destruction.  With  the  worst  coming, 
relentlessly,  rapidly,  audibly,  visibly,  no  one  apparently 
thought  the  worst  would  come;  there  had  been  so  many 
threats  of  disunion  before,  and  the  measures  now  taken 

220 


YEARS    OF    MY    YOUTH 

to  effect  it  seemed  only  a  more  dramatic  sort  of  threats. 
People's  minds  were  confused  by  the  facts  which  they 
could  not  accept  as  portents,  and  the  North  remained 
practically  passive,  while  the  South  was  passionately 
active;  and  yet  not  the  whole  South,  for  as  yet  Seces 
sion  was  not  a  condition,  but  merely  a  principle.  There 
was  a  doubt  with  some  in  the  North  itself  whether 
the  right  of  disunion  was  not  implied  in  the  very  act  of 
union;  there  had  long  been  a  devoted  minority  who  felt 
that  disunion  without  slavery  was  better  than  union  with 
slavery;  and  on  both  sides  there  arose  sentimental  cries, 
entreaties  from  the  South  that  the  North  would  yield 
its  points  of  right  and  conscience,  appeals  from  the 
North  that  the  South  would  not  secede  until  the  nation 
had  time  to  decide  what  it  would  do.  The  North  would 
not  allow  itself  to  consider  seriously  of  coercing  the  seceding 
states;  and  there  was  a  party  willing  to  bid  them,  with 
unavailing  tears,  "Erring  sisters,  go  in  peace,"  as  if  the 
seceding  states,  being  thus  delicately  entreated,  could  not 
have  the  heart  to  go,  even  in  peace.  There  were  hysterical 
conferences  of  statesmen  in  and  out  of  office  to  arrange 
for  mutual  concessions  which  were  to  be  all  on  the  part  of 
the  Union,  or  if  not  that  then  to  order  its  decent  obsequies. 
I  cannot  make  out  that  our  chief  had  any  settled 
policy  for  the  conduct  of  our  paper;  nobody  had  a  settled 
policy  concerning  public  affairs.  If  his  subordinates  had 
any  settled  policy,  it  was  to  get  what  fun  they  could  out 
of  the  sentimentalists,  and  if  they  had  any  fixed  belief  it 
was  that  if  we  had  a  war  peace  must  be  made  on  the 
basis  of  disunion  when  the  war  was  over.  In  our  wisdom 
we  doubted  if  the  sections  could  ever  live  together  in  a 
union  which  they  had  fought  for  and  against.  But  we 
did  not  say  this  in  print,  though  as  matters  grew  more 
hopeless  Price  one  day  seized  the  occasion  of  declaring 
that  the  Constitution  was  a  rope  of  sand.  I  do  not  re- 

221 


YEARS    OF    MY    YOUTH 

member  what  occasion  he  had  for  saying  this,  but  it 
brought  our  chief  actively  back  to  the  censorship;  Price's 
position  was  somehow  explained  away,  and  we  went 
on  as  much  as  before,  much  as  everybody  else  went  on. 
I  will  not,  in  the  confession  of  our  youthful  rashness, 
pretend  that  there  were  any  journalists  who  seemed  then 
or  seem  wiser  now  or  acted  with  greater  forecast;  and  I 
am  sure  that  we  always  spoke  from  our  consciences,  with 
a  settled  conviction  that  the  South  was  wrong.  We 
must  have  given  rather  an  ironical  welcome  to  a  suf- 
ficently  muddled  overture  of  the  Tennessee  legislature 
which  during  the  winter  sent  a  deputation  of  its  members 
to  visit  our  own  Houses  and  confer  with  them  as  to  what 
might  be  done.  The  incident  now  has  it  pathos,  there 
was  so  much  that  was  well  meant  in  the  attempt  to  mend 
our  bad  business  with  kind  words  and  warm  feelings, 
though  then  I  was  sensible  only  of  its  absurdity.  I  did 
not  hear  any  of  the  speeches,  but  I  remember  seeing 
the  Tennessee  statesmen  about  the  Capitol  for  the  dif 
ferent  conferences  held  there  and  noting  that  some  of 
them  spoke  with  a  negroid  intonation  and  not  with  that 
Ohio  accent  which  I  believed  the  best  in  the  English- 
speaking  world.  No  doubt  they  parted  with  our  own 
legislators  affectionately,  and  returned  home  supported 
by  the  hope  that  they  had  really  done  something  in 
a  case  where  there  was  nothing  to  be  done. 

Their  endeavor  was  respectable,  but  there  was  no 
change  in  the  civic  conditions  except  from  bad  to  worse. 
In  the  social  conditions,  or  the  society  conditions,  every 
thing  was  for  the  better,  if  indeed  these  could  be  bettered 
in  Columbus.  Of  all  the  winters  this  was  the  gayest;  so 
ciety  was  kind  again,  after  I  had  paid  the  penalty  it  ex 
acted  for  my  neglect,  and  I  began  to  forget  my  purpose 
of  living  in  air  more  absolutely  literary.  Again  I  began 
going  the  rounds  of  the  friendly  houses,  but  now,  as  if  to 

m 


YEARS    OF    MY    YOUTH 

win  my  fancy  more  utterly,  there  began  to  be  a  series  of 
dances  in  a  place  and  on  conditions  the  most  alluring. 
For  a  while  after  the  functions  of  the  medical  school  were 
suspended  in  the  College  where  I  had  lodged,  the  large 
ward  where  the  lectures  were  once  given  was  turned  into 
a  gymnasium  and  fitted  up  with  the  usual  gymnastic 
apparatus.  I  do  not  recall  whether  this  was  taken  away 
or  not,  or  was  merely  looped  up  and  put  aside  for  our 
dances,  and  I  do  not  know  how  we  came  into  possession 
of  the  place;  in  the  retrospect,  such  things  happen  in 
youth  much  as  things  happen  in  childhood,  without  ap 
parent  human  agency;  but  at  any  rate  we  had  this  noble 
circus  for  our  dances.  There  must  have  been  some  means 
of  joining  them,  but  it  is  now  gone  from  me,  and  I  know 
only  that  they  were  given  under  the  fully  sufficing  chap- 
eronage  of  a  sole  matron.  There  were  two  negro  fiddlers, 
and  the  place  was  lighted  by  candles  fixed  along  the  wall; 
but  memory  does  not  serve  me  as  to  any  sort  of  supper; 
probably  there  was  none,  except  such  as  the  young  men, 
after  they  had  seen  the  young  ladies  to  their  homes,  went 
up-town  to  make  on  the  oysters  of  Ambos. 

It  is  strange  that  within  the  time  so  dense  with  in 
cident  for  us  there  should  have  been  so  few  incidents  now 
separately  tangible,  but  there  is  one  that  vividly  dis 
tinguishes  itself  from  the  others.  In  that  past  I  counted 
any  experience  precious  that  seemed  to  parallel  the  things 
of  fact  with  the  things  of  fiction.  Afterward,  but  long 
afterward,  I  learned  to  praise,  perhaps  too  arrogantly 
praise,  the  things  of  fiction  as  they  paralleled  'the  things 
of  fact,  but  as  yet  it  was  not  so.  I  suppose  the  young  are 
always  like  us  as  we  of  the  College  dances  were  then,  but 
romance  can  rarely  offer  itself  to  youth  of  any  time  in 
the  sort  of  reality  which  one  night  enriched  us  amid  our 
mirth  with  a  wild  thrill  of  dismay  at  the  shriek  in  a  girl's 
yoice  of  "  Dead?"  There  was  an  instant  halt  in  the  music, 

223 


YEARS    OF    MY    YOUTH 

and  then  a  rush  to  the  place  where  the  cry  had  risen. 
Somebody  had  fainted,  and  when  the  fact  could  be 
verified,  it  was  found  that  one  of  the  blithest  of  our  com 
pany  had  been  struck  down  with  word  from  home  that 
her  sister  had  fallen  dead  of  heart  failure.  Then  when 
we  began  to  falter  awa^from  the  poor  child's  withdrawal, 
suddenly  another  tumult  stayed  us;  a  young  father,  who 
had  left  his  first-born  with  its  mother  in  their  rooms  above 
while  he  came  down  for  some  turns  in  the  waltz,  could 
not  believe  that  it  was  not  his  child  that  was  dea.4,  and 
he  had  to  be  pulled  and  pushed  up-stairs  into  sight 
and  sound  of  the  little  one  roused  from  its  sleep  to  con 
vince  him,  before  he  could  trust  the  truth. 

Here  was  mingling  of  the  tragic  and  the  comic 
to  the  full  admired  effect  of  Shakespearian  drama, 
but  the  mere  circumstance  of  these  esthetic  satis 
factions  would  have  been  emotional  wealth  enough; 
and  when  I  got  home  on  such  a  night  to  my  slumber 
ing  room-mate  Price  I  could  give  myself  in  glad  aban 
don  to  the  control  of  the  poet  whose  psychic  I  then 
oftenest  was,  with  some  such  result  as  I  found  in  a  tattered 
manuscript  the  other  day.  I  think  the  poet  could 
hardly  have  resented  my  masking  in  his  wonted  self- 
mocking,  though  I  am  afraid  that  he  would  have  shrunk 
from  the  antic  German  which  I  put  on  to  the  beat  of 
his  music. 

"To-night  there  is  dancing  and  fiddling 

In  the  high  windowed  hall 
Lighted  with  dim  corpse-candles 
In  bottles  against  the  wall. 

"And  the  people  talk  of  the  weather, 
And  say  they  think  it  will  snow; 
And,  without,  the  wind  in  the  gables 
Moans  wearily  and  low. 
224 


YEARS    OF   MY    YOUTH 

'"Sa!   Sal'— the  dance  of  the  Phantoms! 

The  dim  corpse-candles  flare; 
On  the  whirl  of  the  flying  spectres 
The  shuddering  windows  stare. 

"'Oh,  play  us  the  silent  Ghost- Waltz, 

Thou  fiddling  blackamoor!' 
He  hears  the  ghostly  summons, 
He  sees  the  ghosts  on  the  floor. 

"He  plays  the  silent  Ghost-Waltz 

And  through  the  death-mute  hall 
The  voiceless  echoes  answer, 
In  time  the  ghost-feet  fall. 

"Und  immer  und  immer  schneller, 
Und  wild  wie  der  Winterwind 
Die  beide  College  Gespenster 
Sie  walzen  sinnengeschwind. 

"They  waltz  to  the  open  doorway, 

They  waltz  up  the  winding  stair: 

'Oh,  gentle  ghosts  we  are  sneezing, 

We  are  taking  cold  in  the  air.'" 


XII 

Very  likely  those  dances  lasted  through  the  winter,  but 
I  cannot  be  sure;  I  can  only  be  sure  that  they  summed  up 
the  raptures  of  the  time,  which  was  the  most  memorable 
of  my  whole  life;  for  now  I  met  her  who  was  to  be  my 
wife.  We  were  married  the  next  year,  and  she  became 
with  her  unerring  artistic  taste  and  conscience  my  con 
stant  impulse  toward  reality  and  sincerity  in  my  work. 
She  was  the  first  to  blame  and  the  first  to  praise,  as  she 
was  the  first  to  read  what  I  wrote.  Forty-seven  years  we 

were  together  here,  and  then  she  died.     But  in  that  gay- 

225 


YEARS    OF    MY    YOUTH 

est  time  when  we  met  it  did  not  seem  as  if  there  could 
ever  be  an  end  of  time  for  us,  or  any  time  less  radiant. 
Though  the  country  was  drawing  nearer  and  nearer  the 
abyss  where  it  plunged  so  soon,  few  thought  it  would 
make  the  plunge;  many  believed  that  when  it  would  it 
could  draw  back  from  it,  but  doubtless  that  was  never 
possible;  there  is  a  doom  for  nations  as  there  is  for  men, 
and  looking  back  upon  our  history  I  cannot  see  how  we 
could  have  escaped.  The  slaveholders  in  the  old  Union 
were  a  few  hundred  thousand  against  many  millions,  but 
a  force  in  them  beyond  their  own  control  incessantly 
sought  to  control  the  non-slaveholding  majority.  They 
did  not  brook  question  of  their  will  from  others;  they 
brooked  no  self-question  of  it;  however  little  they  seemed 
at  moments  to  demand,  they  never  demanded  less  than 
that  conscience  itself  should  come  to  their  help  in  mak 
ing  their  evil  our  good.  Having  said  that  black  was 
white,  that  wrong  was  right,  they  were  vitally  bound  to 
compel  the  practical  consent  of  humanity.  If  was  what 
it  had  been  aforetime  and  must  be  to  aftertime;  Lincoln 
did  not  deny  them  in  terms  different  from  Franklin's, 
but  the  case  had  gone  farther.  The  hour  had  come  when 
they  would  not  be  denied  at  all;  slavery  could  never 
keep  its  promises;  it  could  hardly  stay  even  to  threaten. 
Long  before  there  had  been  dreams  of  ending  it  by  buy 
ing  the  slaves,  but  the  owners  would  not  have  sold  their 
slaves,  and  now,  though  the  war  against  slavery  tried  to 
believe  itself  a  war  for  the  Union,  when  it  came  to  full 
consciousness  it  knew  itself  a  war  for  freedom ;  such  free 
dom,  lame  and  halt,  as  we  have  been  able  to  keep  for 
the  negroes;  a  war  for  democracy,  such  democracy  as  we 
shall  not  have  for  ourselves  until  we  have  an  economic 
democracy. 

The  prevision  of  the  young  writers  on  the  State  Journal 
was  of  no  such  reach  as  this  retrospect.     The  best  that 

226 


YEARS    OF    MY    YOUTH 

could  be  said  of  them  was  that  so  far  as  they  knew  the 
right,  they  served  it,  and  it  is  no  bad  thing  to  say  of  them 
that  they  met  insolence  with  ridicule  and  hypocrisy  with 
contempt.  Still,  as  always  before  in  those  columns, 
they  got  their  fun  out  of  the  opportunities  which  the 
situation  offered,  and  they  did  not  believe  the  worst  was 
coming;  that  would  excuse  their  levity,  and  it  availed 
as  much  as  gravity.  I  do  not  remember  that  we  took 
counsel  with  any  one  as  to  what  we  said  or  that  we 
consulted  much  with  each  other.  We  did  not  think 
that  the  Union  would  be  dissolved,  but  if  it  should  be 
we  did  not  think  that  its  dissolution  was  the  worst  thing 
that  could  happen;  and  this  was  the  mind  of  vastly 
more  at  that  day  than  most  at  this  day  will  believe; 
some  of  those  who  were  of  that  mind  then  may  not  like 
to  own  it  now.  People  have  the  habit  of  saying  that 
only  those  who  have  lived  through  a  certain  period  can 
realize  it,  but  I  doubt  if  even  they  can  realize  it.  A 
civic  agitation  is  like  a  battle;  it  covers  a  surface  so  large 
that  only  a  part  of  it  can  be  seen  by  any  one  spectator  at 
any  one  moment.  The  fact  seems  to  be  that  the  most 
of  human  motives  and  actions  must  always  remain  obscure; 
historjr  may  do  its  best  to  record  and  reveal  them,  but 
it  will  strive  in  vain  to  give  us  a  living  sense  of  them, 
because  no  one  ever  had  a  living  sense  of  them  in  their 
entirety. 

At  the  period  which  I  am  trying  to  tell  of  the  hours 
passed  and  the  days  and  weeks  and  months,  bringing 
us  forever  nearer  the  catastrophe;  but  I  could  not  truth 
fully  say  that  their  passing  changed  the  general  mood. 
The  College  group  which  I  used  to  consort  with  had 
changed,  and  it  was  no  longer  so  much  to  my  liking; 
it  had  dwindled,  and  for  me  it  chiefly  remained  in  the 
companionship  of  one  friend,  whom  I  walked  and  talked 
with  when  I  was  not  walking  and  talking  with  Price, 

227 


YEARS    OF    MY    YOUTH 
I 

This  was  that  protested  and  rejected  Clive  Newcome, 
i  of  ours,  who  in  real  life  was  James  M.  Comly,  law  student 
then,  and  then  soldier,  and  then  journalist.  Of  all  the 
friends  in  whose  contrast  I  have  been  trying  to  find  my 
self,  he  was  temperamentally  the  most  unlike  me,  but 
a  common  literary  bent  inclined  us  to  each  other.  In  his 
room  there  was  not  only  euchre  for  those  who  could  not 
bear  to  waste  in  idleness  the  half-hours  before  dinner  or 
supper,  but  there  were  the  latest  fashions  in  such  periodi 
cals  as  the  Cornhill  Magazine,  then  so  brand  new,  and  the 
Saturday  Review,  equally  new,  with  the  great  Thackeray 
stooping  from  his  Jovian  height  in  the  monthly  to  blunt 
against  the  weekly,  with  its  social  and  critical  offensives, 
such  bolts  as  calling  it  the  Superfine  Review.  Comly 
was  of  much  the  same  taste  as  myself  in  authors,  but  not 
so  impassioned;  he  was  not  so  multifarious  a  reader  and 
not  so  inclusive  of  the  poets,  and  in  obedience  to  his 
legalist  instincts  he  was  of  more  conservative  feeling  in 
politics.  We  had  never  a  moment  of  misgiving  for  each 
other,  yet  I  had  one  bad  moment  over  an  Atlantic  poem  of 
mine  fabling  the  author  as  a  bird  singing  in  a  tree,  and 
flatteringly  but  unintelligently  listened  to  by  the  cattle 
beneath  which  the  title  of  the  piece  typified  as  "The 
Poet's  Friends."  The  conceit  had  overtempted  me,  but 
when  I  had  realized  it  in  print,  with  no  sense  meantime 
4  of  its  possible  relevance,  I  felt  the  need  of  bringing  myself 
to  book  with  the  friend  I  valued  most,  and  urging  how 
innocently  literary,  how  most  merely  and  entirely  drama 
tic  the  situation  was.  I  think  my  anxiety  amused  him, 
as  it  very  well  might,  but  I  still  draw  a  long  breath  of 
relief  when  I  remember  how  perfectly  he  understood. 

Our  association  was  mostly  in  the  walks  we  took  in  the 
winter  twilights  and  the  summer  moonlights,  walks  long 
enough  in  the  far-stretching  Columbus  streets  to  have 
encompassed  the  globe;  but  our  talks  were  not  nearly  so 

228 


YEARS    OF    MY    YOUTH 

long  as  the  walks,  walks  in  which  there  were  reaches  of 
reticence,  when  apparently  it  was  enough  for  us  to  be 
walking  together.  Yet  we  must  often  have  talked  about 
the  books  we  were  reading,  that  is  to  say  the  novels, 
though  seldom  about  public  events,  which  is  the  stranger, 
or  the  less  strange,  because  as  a  student  of  law  he  was 
of  course  a  potential  politician,  and  I  was  writing  politics 
every  day. 

He  was  the  last  but  one  of  the  friends  whom  my  youth 
was  so  rich  in,  for  no  reason  more,  perhaps,  than  that  we 
were  young  together,  though  they  were  all  older  than  I, 
and  Cornly  was  five  or  six  years  my  senior.  When  I 
knew  him  first,  with  his  tall,  straight  figure,  his  features 
of  Greek  fineness,  his  blue  eyes,  and  his  moustache  thin 
and  ashen  blond,  he  was  of  a  distinction  fitting  the  soldier 
he  became  when  the  Civil  War  began,  and  he  fought 
through  the  four  years'  struggle  with  such  gallantry  and 
efficiency  that  he  came  out  of  it  with  the  rank  of  brigadier- 
general.  He  had  broken  with  the  law  amid  arms,  and  in 
due  time  he  succeeded  to  the  control  of  our  newspaper 
where  he  kept  on  terms  of  his  own  the  tradition  of  Reed, 
which  Price  and  I  had  continued  in  our  fashion,  and  made 
the  paper  an  increasing  power.  But  he  had  never  been 
the  vigorous  strength  he  looked,  and  after  certain  years  of 
overwork  he  accepted  the  appointment  of  minister  to 
Hawaii.  The  rest  and  the  mild  climate  renewed  his 
health,  and  he  came  back  to  journalism  under  different 
conditions  of  place.  But  the  strain  was  the  same;  he 
gave  way  under  it  again,  and  died  a  few  years  later. 


XIII 


I  cannot  make  out  why,  having  the  friends  and  in 
centives  I  had  in  Columbus,  I  should  have  wished  to  go 

229 


YEARS    OF    MY    YOUTH 

away,  but  more  and  more  I  did  wish  that.  There  was  no 
reason  for  it  except  my  belief  that  my  work  would  be  less 
acceptable  if  I  remained  in  the  West ;  that  I  should  get  on 
faster  if  I  wrote  in  New  York  than  if  I  wrote  in  Columbus. 
Somehow  I  fancied  there  would  be  more  intellectual  at 
mosphere  for  me  in  the  great  city,  but  I  do  not  believe 
this  now,  and  I  cannot  see  how  I  could  anywhere  have 
had  more  intelligent  sympathy.  When  I  came  home  from 
Venice  in  1865,  and  was  looking  about  for  some  means  of 
livelihood,  I  found  that  Lowell  had  a  fancy  for  my  return 
ing  to  the  West,  and  living  my  literary  life  in  my  own  air 
if  not  on  my  own  ground.  He  apparently  thought  the 
experiment  would  be  interesting;  and  if  I  were  again 
twenty-eight  I  should  like  to  try  it.  I  would  indeed  have 
been  glad  then  of  any  humble  place  on  a  newspaper  in  the 
West;  but  the  East  more  hospitably  entreated  me,  and 
after  a  flattering  venture  in  New  York  journalism  I  was 
asked  to  the  place  in  Boston  which  of  all  others  in  the 
world  was  that  I  could  most  have  desired. 

In  those  Columbus  days  I  was  vaguely  aware  that  if  I 
went  farther  from  home  I  should  be  homesick,  for  where 
I  was,  in  that  happy  environment,  I  was  sometimes  almost 
intolerably  homesick.  From  my  letters  home  I  find  that 
I  was  vividly  concerned  in  the  affairs  of  those  I  had  left 
there,  striving  and  saving  to  pay  for  the  printing-office 
and  the  house  with  so  little  help  from  me.  I  was  still 
sometimes  haunted  by  the  hypochondria  which  had  once 
blackened  my  waking  hours  with  despair;  I  dare  say  I 
was  always  overworking,  and  bringing  my  fear  upon  me 
out  of  the  exhaustion  of  my  nerves.  Perhaps  I  am  con 
fiding  too  much  when  I  speak  of  this  most  real,  most  un 
real  misery,  but  if  the  confession  of  it  will  help  any  who 
suffer,  especially  in  the  solitude  of  youth  which  inexperi 
ence  makes  a  prison-house,  I  shall  not  be  ashamed  of 

what  some  may  impute  to  me  for  weakness,     If  one  knows 

230 


YEARS    OF    MY    YOUTH 

there  is  some  one  else  who  is  suffering  in  his  kind,  then 
one  can  bear  it  better;  and  in  this  way,  perhaps,  men 
are  enabled  to  go  to  their  death  in  battle,  where  they 
die  with  thousands  of  others;  in  the  multitudinous  doom 
of  the  Last  Day  its  judgments  may  not  be  so  dread 
ful  to  the  single  culprit.  Like  every  one  who  lives,  I 
was  a  congeries  of  contradictions,  willing  to  play  with  the 
fancies  that  came  to  me,  but  afraid  of  them  if  they  stayed 
too  late.  Yet  I  did  not  lose  much  sleep  from  them;  it  is 
after  youth  is  gone  that  we  begin  to  lose  sleep  from  care; 
while  our  years  are  few  we  indeed  rise  up  with  care,  but 
it  does  not  wake  night-long  with  us,  as  it  does  when  our 
years  are  more. 

I  had  a  most  cheerful  companion  in  my  colleague, 
Price,  who  so  loved  to  laugh  and  to  make  laugh.  If  he 
never  made  the  calls  or  went  to  the  parties  to  which 
I  tempted  him,  apparently  he  found  our  own  society 
sufficient,  and,  in  fact,  I  could  not  wish  for  anything 
better  myself  than  when,  the  day's  work  and  the  night's 
pleasure  ended  for  me,  we  sat  together  in  the  editorial- 
room,  where  our  chief  seldom  molested  us,  and  waited 
for  the  last  telegraphic  despatches  before  sending  the 
paper  to  press.  Sometimes  we  had  the  company  of 
officials  from  the  State  House  who  came  over  to  while 
away  the  hours,  more  haggard  for  them  than  for  us,  with 
the  stories  they  told  while  we  listened.  They  were  often 
such  stories  as  Lincoln  liked,  no  doubt  for  the  humorous 
human  nature  and  racy  character  in  them.  Very  likely 
he  found  a  relief  in  them  from  the  tragedy  overhanging 
us  all,  but  not  molesting  our  young  souls  with  the  por 
tents  which  the  sad-eyed  man  of  duty  and  of  doom  was 
aware  of,  or  perhaps  not  yet  aware  of. 

The  strangest  impression  that  the  time  has  left  with 
me  is  a  sense  of  the  patient  ignorance  which  seemed  to 
involve  the  whole  North.  Doubtless  the  South,  or  the 
16  231 


YEARS    OF    MY    YOUTH 

more  positive  part  of  it,  knew  what  it  was  about ;  but  the 
North  could  only  theorize  and  conjecture  and  wait 
while  those  who  were  in  keeping  of  the  nation  were  seeking 
its  life.  In  the  glare  of  the  events  -that  followed  volcanic- 
ally  enough,  it  seems  as  if  the  North  must  have  been  of  the 
single  mind  which  it  became  when  the  shot  fired  on 
Fort  Sumter  woke  it  at  last  to  the  fact  that  the  country 
was  really  in  peril.  But  throughout  the  long  suspense 
after  Lincoln's  election  till  his  inauguration  there  was 
no  settled  purpose  in  the  North  to  save  the  Union,  much 
less  to  fight  for  it.  People  ate  and  slept  for  the  most 
part  tranquilly  throughout;  they  married  and  gave  in 
marriage;  they  followed  their  dead  to  the  grave  with  no 
thought  that  the  dead  were  well  out  of  the  world;  they 
bought  and  sold,  and  got  gain;  what  seemed  the  end 
could  not  be  the  end,  because  it  had  never  come  before. 
After  the  war  actually  began  we  could  not  feel  that  it 
had  begun;  we  had  the  evidence  of  our  senses,  but  not  of 
our  experiences;  in  most  things  it  was  too  like  peace 
to  be  really  war.  Neither  of  the  great  sections  believed 
in  the  other,  but  the  South,  which  was  solidified  by  the 
slaveholding  caste,  had  the  advantage  of  believing  in 
itself,  and  the  North  did  not  believe  in  itself  till  the 
fighting  began.  Then  it  believed  too  much  and  despised 
the  enemy  at  its  throat.  Among  the  grotesque  instances 
of  our  self-confidence  I  recall  the  consoling  assurance 
of  an  old  friend,  a  chief  citizen  and  wise  in  his  science, 
who  said,  as  the  hostile  forces  were  approaching  each 
other  in  Virginia,  "Oh,  they  will  run/'  and  he  meant  the 
Southerners,  as  he  lifted  his  fine  head  and  blew  a  whiff 
from  his  pipe  into  the  air.  "As  soon  as  they  see  we  are 
in  earnest  they  will  run,"  but  it  was  not  from  us  that  they 
ran;  and  the  North  was  startled  from  its  fallacy  that  sixty 
days  would  see  the  end  of  the  rebellion,  whose  end  no 
prophet  had  now  the  courage  to  forecast.  We  of  the 

232 


YEARS    OF    MY    YOUTH 

Ohio  capital  were  a  very  political  community,  the  most 
political  in  the  whole  state,  in  virtue  of  our  being  the 
capital,  but  none  of  the  rumors  of  war  had  distracted  us 
from  our  pleasures  or  affairs,  at  least  so  far  as  the  eyes  of 
youth  could  see.  With  our  faith  in  the  good  ending,  as  if 
our  national  story  were  a  tale  that  must  end  well,  with 
whatever  suspenses,  or  thrilling  episodes,  we  had  put  the 
day's  anxieties  by  and  hopefully  waited  for  the  morrow's 
consolations.  But  when  the  fateful  shot  was  fired  at 
Fort  Sumter,  it  was  as  if  the  echo  had  not  died  away  when 
a  great  public  meeting  was  held  in  response  to  the  Presi 
dent's  call  for  volunteers,  and  the  volunteering  began 
with  an  effect  of  simultaneity  which  the  foreshortening 
of  past  events  always  puts  on  to  the  retrospective  eye. 
It  seemed  as  if  it  were  only  the  night  before  that  we  had 
listened  to  the  young  Patti,  now  so  old,  singing  her 
sweetest  in  that  hall  where  the  warlike  appeals  rang  out, 
with  words  smiting  like  blows  in  that  " Anvil  Chorus" 
which  between  her  songs  had  thrilled  us  with  the  belief 
that  we  were  listening  to  the  noblest  as  well  as  the  newest 
music  in  the  world. 

I  have  sometimes  thought  that  I  would  write  a  novel, 
with  its  scene  in  our  capital  at  that  supreme  moment 
when  the  volunteering  began,  but  I  shall  never  do  it, 
and  without  the  mask  of  fiction  one  cannot  give  the  living 
complexion  of  events.  Instantly  the  town  was  inundated 
from  all  the  towns  of  the  state  and  from  the  farms  between 
as  with  a  tidal  wave  of  youth;  for  most  of  those  who 
flooded  our  streets  were  boys  of  eighteen  and  twenty, 
and  they  came  in  the  wild  hilarity  of  their  young  vision, 
singing  by  day  and  by  night,  one  sad  inconsequent  song, 
that  filled  the  whole  air,  and  that  fills  my  sense  yet  as  I 
think  of  them: 

"  Oh,  nebber  mind  the  weather,  but  git  ober  double  trouble, 
For  we're  bound  for  the  happy  land  of  Canaan." 

233 


YEARS    OF   MY   YOUTH 

They  wore  red  shirts,  as  if  the  color  of  the  Garibaldian 
war  for  Union  in  Italy  had  flashed  itself  across  the  sea  to 
be  the  hue  of  our  own  war  for  Union.  With  interlinked 
arms  they  ranged  up  and  down,  and  pushed  the  willing 
citizens  from  the  pavement,  and  shouted  the  day  and 
shouted  the  night  away,  with  no  care  but  the  fear  that 
in  the  outpour  of  their  death-daring  they  might  not  be 
gathered  into  the  ranks  filling  up  the  quota  of  regiments 
assigned  to  Ohio.  The  time  had  a  sublimity  which  no 
other  time  can  know,  unless  some  proportionate  event 
shall  again  cause  the  nation  to  stand  up  as  one  man,  and 
the  spectacle  had  a  mystery  and  an  awe  which  I  cannot 
hope  to  impart.  I  knew  that  these  boys,  bursting  from 
their  fields  and  shops  as  for  a  holiday,  were  just  such  boys 
as  I  had  always  known,  and  if  I  looked  at  any  one  of 
them  as  they  went  swaggering  and  singing  up  and  down 
I  recognized  him  for  what  they  were,  but  in  their  strag 
gling  ranks,  with  their  young  faces  flushed  the  red  of  the 
blouses  and  their  young  eyes  flaming,  I  beheld  them 
transfigured.  I  do  not  pretend  that  they  were  of  the 
make  of  armies  such  as  I  had  seen  pictured  marching  in 
serried  ranks  to  battle,  and  falling  in  bloody  windrows 
on  the  smoke-rolled  plain.  All  that  belonged  to 

"  Old,  unhappy,  far-off  days," 

and  not  to  the  morrows  in  which  I  dwelt.  But  possibly 
if  I  had  written  that  forever-to-be-unwritten  novel  I  might 
have  plucked  out  the  heart  of  the  moment  and  laid  it 
throbbing  before  the  reader;  and  yet  I  might  rather  have 
been  satisfied  with  the  more  subjective  riddle  of  one  who 
looked  on,  and  baffled  himself  with  question  of  the  event. 
Only  two  or  three  of  the  friends  who  had  formed  our 
College  group  went  to  the  war;  of  these  my  friend  Com- 
ly,  had  been  one  of  the  earliest,  and  when  I  found  him 
officer  of  the  day  at  the  first  camp  of  the  volunteers,  he 

234 

** 


YEARS    OF    MY    YOUTH 

gave  me  what  time  he  could,  but  he  was  helplessly  pre 
occupied,  and  the  whole  world  I  had  known  was  es 
tranged.  One  morning  I  met  another  friend,  coming 
down  the  State  House  steps  and  smiling  radiantly;  he 
also  was  a  law  student,  and  he  had  just  been  made  ad 
jutant  of  a  newly  accepted  regiment.  Almost  imme 
diately  afterward  he  was  changed  to  the  line,  and  at  the 
end  of  the  war,  after  winning  its  last  important  battle, 
John  G.  Mitchell  came  out  with  the  rank  of  brigadier- 
general,  to  which  the  brevet  of  major-general  could  scarce 
ly  add  distinction.  By  the  chances  which  play  with  our 
relations  in  life  I  had  not  known  him  so  well  as  some 
others.  He  was  not  of  the  College  group;  but  after  the 
war  we  came  familiarly  together  in  the  friendship  of  the 
cousins  who  had  become  our  wives.  In  that  after-time 
he  once  held  me  rapt  with  the  stories  of  his  soldier  life, 
promising,  or  half  promising,  to  put  them  down  for  print, 
but  never  doing  it,  so  that  now  they  are  lost  to  that  rec 
ord  of  personal  experience  of  battle  which  forms  so  vital 
a  part  of  our  history.  No  stories  of  that  life  which  I 
have  read  have  seemed  to  me  so  frank,  so  full,  so  real,  as 
those  he  told. 

Our  first  camp  was  in  our  pretty  Goodale  Park,  where 
I  used  to  walk  and  talk  with  the  sculptor  Ward,  and  try 
the  athletic  feats  in  which  he  easily  beat  me.  Now  the 
pine  sheds  covered  the  long  tables,  spread  with  coffee  and 
pork  and  beans,  and  the  rude  bunks  filled  with  straw,  and 
here  and  there  a  boy  volunteer  frowzily  drowsing  in 
them.  It  was  one  of  the  many  shapeless  beginnings 
which  were  to  end  in  the  review  of  the  hundred  thousands 
of  seasoned  soldiers  marching  to  their  mustering  out  in 
Washington  after  four  years  of  fire  and  blood.  No  one 
could  imagine  that  any  of  these  boys  were  to  pass  through 
that  abyss,  or  that  they  would  not  come  safely  out.  Even 
after  the  cruel  disillusion  of  Manassas  the  superstition 

235 


YEARS    OF    MY    YOUTH 

of  quick  work  remained  with  the  North,  and  the  three 
years'  quota  of  Ohio  was  rilled  almost  as  jubilantly  as 
the  three  months',  but  not  quite  so  jubilantly.  Sons  and 
brothers  came  with  tears  to  replace  fathers  and  brothers 
who  had  not  returned  from  Manassas,  and  there  was  a 
funeral  undertone  in  the  shrilling  of  the  fifes  and  the 
throbbing  of  the  drums  which  was  not  so  before.  Life 
is  like  Hamlet  and  will  oftentimes  "put  an  antic  disposi 
tion  on,"  which  I  have  never  been  one  to  refuse  recogni 
tion,  and  now  I  must,  with  whatever  effect  from  it,  own 
a  bit  of  its  mockery.  One  of  our  reporters  was  a  father 
whose  son  had  been  among  the  first  to  go,  and  word  came 
that  the  boy  had  been  killed  at  Manassas.  I  liked  the 
father  as  I  had  liked  the  son,  and  the  old  man's  grief 
moved  me  to  such  poor  offer  of  consolation  as  verse  could 
make.  He  was  deeply  touched,  but  the  next  day  another 
word  came  that  the  boy  was  alive  and  well,  and  I  could 
not  leave  my  elegiacs  with  his  father,  who  was  apparently 
reluctant  to  renounce  the  glory  of  them,  although  so  glad. 
But  he  gave  them  back,  and  I  depersonalized  them  by 
removing  the  name  of  the  young  soldier,  and  finally 
printed  them  in  the  volume  of  poems  which  two  or  three 
people  still  buy  every  year. 


XIV 

It  was  a  question  now  whether  I  could  get  the  appointment 
of  a  consulate  which  I  had  already  applied  for,  quite  as 
much,  I  believe,  upon  the  incentive  of  my  fellow-citizens 
as  from  a  very  natural  desire  of  my  own.  It  seemed 
to  be  the  universal  feeling,  after  the  election  of  Lincoln, 
that  I  who  had  written  his  life  ought  to  have  a  consulate, 
as  had  happened  with  Hawthorne,  who  had  written  the 
life  of  Franklin  Pierce.  It  was  thought  a  very  fitting 
thing,  and  my  fellow-citizens  appeared  willing  I  should 


YEARS    OF    MY    YOUTH 

have  any  consulate,  but  I,  with  constitutional  unhopeful- 
ness,  had  fixed  my  mind  upon  that  of  Munich,  as  in  the 
way  to  further  study  of  the  German  language  and  litera 
ture,  and  this  was  the  post  I  asked  for  in  an  application 
\signed  by  every  prominent  Republican  in  the  capital,  from 
\  the  Governor  down.  The  Governor  was  now  ^illiam 
Dfinnison,  who  afterward  became  Postmaster-General, 
and  who  had  always  been  my  friend,  rather  in  the  measure 
of  his  charming  good  will  than  my  merit,  from  my  first 
coming  to  Columbus;  Chase  had  already  entered  Lincoln's 
Cabinet  as  Secretary  of  the  Treasury.  But  in  spite 
of  this  backing  the  President,  with  other  things  on  his 
mind,  did  not  respond  in  any  way  until  some  months 
had  dragged  by,  when  one  day  I  received  without  warn 
ing  an  official  envelope  addressed  to  me  as  "  Consul  at 
Rome,  now  at  Columbus,  Ohio."  Rome  was  not  exactly 
Munich,  and  the  local  language  and  literature  were  not 
German,  but  I  could  not  have  expected  the  State  Depart 
ment  to  take  cognizance  of  a  tacit  ideal  of  mine,  and  the 
consulate  was  at  any  rate  a  consulate,  which  perhaps 
most  of  my  friends  supposed  was  what  I  wanted.  It  was 
welcome  enough,  for  I  was  again  to  be  dropped  from  the 
high  horse  which  I  had  been  riding  for  nearly  a  year  past ; 
one  of  those  changes  in  the  State  Journal  which  Greeley, 
in  his  unsolicited  lecture,  had  imputed  to  it  for  unworthi- 
ness  was  at  hand,  and  the  gentleman  who  was  buying  a 
controlling  share  in  it  might  or  might  not  wish  to  write 
the  editorials  himself.  At  any  rate  the  Roman  consulship 
was  not  to  be  declined  without  inquiry,  but  as  there  was 
no  salary,  and  the  consul  was  supposed  to  live  upon  the 
fees  taken,  I  tried  to  find  out  how  much  the  fees  might 
annually  come  to.  Meanwhile  I  was  advised  by  prudence 
to  accept  the  appointment  provisionally;  it  would  be 
easy  to  resign  it  if  I  could  not  afford  to  keep  it;  and  I 
waited  to  see  what  the  new  proprietor  meant  to  do. 

237 


YEARS    OF    MY    YOUTH 

Apparently  he  meant  to  be  editor  as  well  as  proprietor, 
and  Price  and  I  must  go,  which  we  made  ready  to  do  as 
soon  as  the  new  proprietor  came  into  his  own.  Three 
or  four  times  in  my  life  I  have  suffered  some  such  fate  as  I 
suffered  then;  but  I  never  lost  a  place  except  through  the 
misfortune  of  those  who  gave  it  me;  then  with  whatever 
heart  I  could  I  accepted  the  inevitable.  At  the  worst, 
I  was  yet  "Consul  at  Rome  now  at  Columbus,"  and 
I  had  my  determination  to  work.  I  was  never  hope 
ful,  I  was  never  courageous,  but  somehow  I  was  dogged. 
I  had  no  overweening  belief  in  myself,  and  yet  I  thought, 
at  the  bottom  of  my  soul,  that  I  had  in  me  the  make  of 
the  thing  I  was  bent  on  doing,  the  thing  literature,  the 
greatest  thing  in  the  world. 

When  our  new  proprietor  arrived  Price  and  I  dis 
abled  his  superiority,  probably  on  no  very  sufficient 
grounds,  but  he  had  the  advantage  in  not  wanting  our 
help,  and  I  decided  to  go  to  Washington  and  look  per 
sonally  into  the  facts  of  the  Roman  consulship.  As 
perhaps  some  readers  of  this  may  know,  it  ultimately 
turned  into  the  Venetian  consulship,  but  by  just  what\ 
friendly  magic,  has  been  told  with  sufficient  detail  in  a 
chapter  of  Literary  Friends  and  Acquaintance  and  need 
not  be  rehearsed  here.  As  for  Price,  he  had  nothing  at 
all  before  him,  but  he  was  by  no  means  un cheerful.  We 
had  certainly  had  a  joyous  though  parlous  year  together; 
our  jokes  could  not  have  been  numbered  in  a  season  when 
the  only  excuse  for  joking  was  that  it  might  as  well  be 
that  as  weeping,  though  probably  we  had  our  serious 
times,  especially  when  we  foreboded  a  fresh  dismay  in 
our  chief  at  some  escapade  in  derision  or  denunciation  of 
the  well-meaning  patriots'  efforts  to  hold  the  Union  to 
gether  with  mucilage. 

But  the  time  came  when  all  this  tragical  mirth  was  to 
end.  We  found  that  we  did  not  dislike  the  new  owner, 

238 


YEARS    OF    MY    YOUTH 

and  he  liked  us  well  enough,  but  he  was  eager  to  try  his 
hand  at  our  work,  and  some  time  early  in  August  we 
quitted  the  familiar  place.  If  there  was  any  form  of 
adieu  with  our  gentle  chief  I  do  not  remember  it,  and  in 
fact  my  mind  holds  no  detail  of  our  parting  except  the 
last  hour  of  it,  when  we  found  ourselves  together  at  mid 
night  in  the  long,  gloomy  barn  then  known  as  the  Little 
Miami  Depot,  where  we  were  to  take  our  separate  ways 
in  the  dark  which  hid  us  from  each  other  forever.  We 
walked  up  and  down  a  long  time,  talking,  talking,  talking, 
laughing,  promising  each  other  to  be  faithful  in  letters, 
and  wearing  our  souls  out  in  the  nothings  which  people 
say  at  such  times  with  the  vain  endeavor  to  hold  them 
selves  together  against  the  fate  which  is  to  sunder  them 
in  the  voluntary  death  of  parting.  We  heard  the  whistle 
of  an  approaching  train,  we  shook  hands,  we  said  good- 
by,  and  then  in  a  long  wait  repeated  the  nothings  again 
and  again.  But  my  train  on  the  Central  Ohio  was  al 
ready  there;  and  as  Price  obeyed  the  call  to  board  his 
train  for  Cleveland,  I  mounted  mine  for  Washington,  and 
we  never  saw  each  other  again.  It  is  long  since  he  died, 
and  I  who  still  survive  him  after  fifty  years  offer  his 
memory  this  vow  of  abiding  affection.  If  we  somewhere 
should  somewhen  meet,  perhaps  it  will  be  with  a  fond 
smile  for  the  time  we  were  young  and  so  glad  together, 
with  so  little  reason.  V 


THE    END 


BERKELEY  LIBRARIES 


